


Chosen Chains

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anger, Angst, Bondage, Dom/sub, M/M, Riddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 04:48:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 112,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has spent the last two years in semi-exile from the wizarding world after bitter arguments with the Ministry and his best friends. Now the Ministry summons him back, since they can’t run the school without the cooperation of Dumbledore’s portrait—and Dumbledore will only talk to Harry. Draco, summoned to talk to Snape’s portrait at the same time, meets a Harry he hasn’t expected, one who’s going to request something strange from him, and perhaps require more than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The D/s and bondage elements are a fairly serious part of the story; be warned.

“I still don’t understand why Annie would have to go away,” Mrs. Crompton said, her expression so distressed that Harry nodded sympathetically in spite of himself. 

It wasn’t easy. He had spent almost three hours in this hot, cramped room with young Annie Crompton, a Muggleborn girl just experiencing her first signs of magic, and both parents. He had explained the existence of the wizarding world to them, demonstrated his own spells, explained why he had been called in to help them—there were a few other half-bloods and Muggleborns who could have come, but most of them were on holiday right now—and told them that Annie wouldn’t need to go a magical school until she was eleven. Both Crompton parents refused to understand.

Harry reminded himself to be patient, and tried to ignore the sweat creeping down his neck and the tension coiled in his muscles. Annie, small for six years of age and with dark hair that struggled into curls, was his focus here, or should be. She sat on a chair between her parents and watched him with squinting blue eyes.

“It would be hard to have her practicing magic among Muggles,” Harry said, for the sixth time. He glanced at the walls, hoping to distract his attention, and then jerked his head away when he saw the photographs of mother, father, and child. This house resembled Number 4 Privet Drive too closely for comfort. It was even in Surrey. “And hard to hide our existence then.”

“Don’t see why you need to,” Herbert Crompton said, leaning forwards to thump a fist down on the stool in front of him. Annie jumped, but smoothed her expression out again before her father could notice. “She can give it up any time she likes. Not that important, is it?”

“I’m sure something could be done with seaweed to help wean her off it,” Adela Crompton said, one hand fluttering in front of her. “They can do wonderful things with seaweed now.”

Harry sighed. The Cromptons had accepted the existence of magic much more easily than some of the Muggle parents he spoke with; that wasn’t the problem. They simply didn’t want anything to disrupt their perfect, normal existence.

_Just like the Dursleys._

Magic crept up his chest and into his hair in bright tendrils, which never did anyone any good. Harry did his best to ignore it. It was unlikely to manifest in ways the Cromptons could notice unless he got much angrier than he was now. “She can’t just drop magic,” he said. “She has to have _some_ kind of training. If she decides that she doesn’t want to go a magical school, then she can do that. But she’d need a few years of learning to control her magic first.”

“She doesn’t need it.” Mrs. Crompton turned and smiled mistily at Annie. “Did you ever see any child that self-possessed?”

_Not many,_ Harry thought, meeting Annie’s eyes again. _And that’s the problem._

The Cromptons seemed to have ambitions for Annie even higher and more stringent than the ones Petunia and Vernon had entertained for Dudley, but they expected her to actually achieve them. Harry could see the awards placed along the walls between the photographs and how Annie sat too still, shoulders drawn up as if someone had shouted into her face.

No signs of actual abuse, he thought—he was familiar with those by now—but she was supposed to be her parents’ golden child, their perfect little girl, and had curled into herself under the pressure.

Not that things would be that much easier for her in the wizarding world, where tensions between pure-bloods and Muggleborns were creeping up again.

Harry forced himself to hold his breath so he wouldn’t give in to the anger, and then glanced at the Cromptons. “Magic is different than emotions, ma’am,” he said. “Things she wants, people she thinks are threats, small and fleeting desires—the magic will react to all of those, and in a wilder and wilder way unless she gets training.”

“Is this some kind of therapy?” Mr. Crompton was trying to look down his bespectacled nose at Harry, which might have worked if he was in any way impressive, or Harry easily frightened.

“Of course not,” Harry said. “She’ll get help, yes, but _only_ to learn how to deal with her magic. I can see that she’s smart and doesn’t need any help other than that.”

The Cromptons preened. Annie widened her eyes and stared at Harry as if he had said something far more remarkable than what he had.

“But it has to be her decision,” Harry said, looking at Annie. “If she doesn’t want to get training right now, she doesn’t have to. But then it will make it all the more important for her to spend at least a _little_ time in a magical school when she’s eleven.”

“Why is the age of eleven so all-fired important?” Mr. Crompton fidgeted in his seat and tried the glare again. Harry clenched his jaw. He _wouldn’t_ snarl at a man who really did love his daughter.

“Because that’s when wizard children are trusted to handle their wands,” Harry said. “Most students attend the magical schools soon after their eleventh birthday.” It had taken a long time to remind himself to say _magical schools_ and not _Hogwarts,_ and not because he wanted to be more inclusive. It was the strict truth. Hogwarts had been closed since the war.

Bitter iron filled his mouth. Harry licked his lips and wished he could spit.

“Our Annie doesn’t want any of that,” said Mr. Crompton.

“You’re sure about the seaweed?” asked Mrs. Crompton.

“Maybe we should ask _Annie_ what she wants?” Harry said, but the hardness of his voice made both of them shut up and sit up straighter. Harry turned to the girl and waited. He felt a vicious satisfaction in making the Cromptons stop babbling, told himself that he shouldn’t, and felt it anyway.

Annie moved her hands a bit, the only visible sign of agitation Harry had seen her give since he arrived and started explaining. Then she looked him in the eye and asked, “What happens if I don’t get training? Specifically?”

Harry nodded to her. “You can cause danger to people when you’re young and your magic just reacts. I made one of my aunts inflate like a balloon and float in the air.” Mr. and Mrs. Crompton looked ready to faint. Harry ignored their reaction. He was more interested in Annie’s. “I wanted to get away from some kids who were chasing me and ended up on a roof. I get angry at a teacher and turned her hair blue. I didn’t know what was happening. No one told me I was a wizard. I found out when I was eleven, and I was happy about it, but I really wished someone would have told me sooner.” He softened his voice, leaning towards her. “That’s one reason I come around. Even if you don’t want to be any part of the wizarding world, you need to know what’s happening and you deserve to have a name for what you are.”

“A witch,” Annie said. She sounded as though she were trying the word out.

“But she doesn’t _have_ to be,” Mrs. Crompton said. “No law says that she’s required to be.”

“No,” Harry said, as mildly as he could under the circumstances. “But it could be dangerous for her if she’s not.”

“Would she die?” Mr. Crompton flashed an apprehensive look in Harry’s direction.

“No,” Harry said again. “But she could be hurt.”

“What _would_ the neighbors think, though?” Mrs. Crompton took on an expression that reminded Harry very much of Aunt Petunia. “I’m sure you’ll understand, Mr. Potter, that we have to think of our reputation and our honesty. What are we going to say if Annie goes to a school like this? ‘Oh, yes, we sent her to a school for people who can do magic?’ It’s a bit _abnormal—_ ”

One of the photographs on the wall abruptly jumped out of its frame and landed on the carpet. Both the senior Cromptons stared at it with their mouths open. The glass in front of it hadn’t broken or otherwise parted to let it through, which Harry knew was startling when you were seeing it for the first time.

“Sorry,” Harry said pleasantly. “A bit hot in here, isn’t it?”

Magic hissed and curled under his fingernails. Harry turned his hands over so that they wouldn’t see. No doubt about it; when he got out of here, he would have to go in search of stress relief. He hated to do it, but it had been three months. Clearly something had to be done.

“In the end, Annie is the one who has to make the decision,” he said. “And she has five years to do that.” He smiled at Annie, but she only looked cautiously back at him. Harry thought she’d probably had a lot of practice at telling when someone was putting on a polite mask but was angry behind it. “If she doesn’t get training before she’s eleven, the wild magic will calm down a bit. But after that age, it increases again. Please do consider that before you decide that she can never go.”

He stood up. Mrs. Crompton stood up with him, shaking her head. “I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “What will it matter to her ability to get along in the _real_ world?”

Harry suddenly had an idea about what might work here. He should have thought of it right away, given that Hermione was so oriented towards good marks, and he thought her parents had trained her to be high-achieving.

But then again, he no longer spent a lot of time thinking about Hermione.

He leaned forwards and caught Mrs. Crompton’s eye. “You’re forgetting that she would have two worlds to conquer,” he whispered. “If she wants high marks in magical school, surely someone who’s had a Muggle education would do better than someone who’s had nothing but a magical one?”

Mrs. Crompton suddenly looked thoughtful.

Harry gave her a smile, the least strained one he could muster under the circumstances, and then turned and held his hand out to Annie. He hoped that he wasn’t putting her in a worse situation than before, with the pressure to do great coming from two directions, but he literally couldn’t think of any other tactics that would work right now. He would try again, and try to do better, once it wasn’t so hot and he was less stressed. “Good-bye, Annie. Think about what I said, won’t you? I’ll see you next week.”

Annie looked up at him with wide eyes before she took his hand. “Good-bye,” she said.

No words of promise or decision one way or the other, Harry thought as he nodded to her and took his leave. Well, and he could hardly blame her, when her parents were right in the room with her and obviously listening for her to say something wrong.

“Good-bye,” he said to the Cromptons in general, and in less than a minute he was out on the street and walking briskly away between the nearly-identical houses. He was ready to admit that this street might have a _little_ more character than Privet Drive, but surely not much.

_I hope that it won’t drive a magical child mad to grow up here,_ he thought, and spun to Apparate the moment he found an isolated back garden. Then, the instant he landed in his house, he went to find paper and pen. He was accustomed to sending messages by Muggle post now, since he almost never communicated with the wizarding world and hadn’t replaced Hedwig.

As he was writing out his carefully-worded request to Bradley, the Muggle man he had gone to three months ago, an annoyed tapping and a hoot came from his front window.

Harry swore and flicked his wand in a nonverbal spell that jerked the window up. The owl flew in, landed on his desk, and stood there staring at him, shifting from foot to foot as if the letter it carried physically hurt it.

Harry snapped his fingers, and this time the blast of wandless magic tore the letter free and threw the owl a good foot backwards. It caught itself with a flutter and a screech and zoomed to sit on the back of a chair this time, hunched over.

Harry knew he hadn’t hurt it, and therefore felt free to ignore it as he tore into the envelope. Goddamnit, he wanted business _done_ for the day so that he could get of here and to Bradley’s house.

The envelope was the thick, resistant kind that only the Ministry used, and Harry felt the magic curl through him once more, melting the seal so that he had to tilt the letter away from him as wax dripped on the floor. Then he half-tore the letter removing it, and threw it on the desk to lie there, burned along the side. Harry turned and stamped convulsively on the envelope until he thought his temper had worn out.

Then he finished writing his own letter and went to post it before he came back and confronted the Ministry’s moronic missive.

_Dear Mr. Potter:_

_It will please you to know that we are requesting your help in the reopening of Hogwarts. The Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor, as well as other important artifacts, have temporarily been placed beyond our reach, and the portrait of Headmaster Dumbledore has requested to speak with you before he reveals their location. This is a formality only, and should take no more than a few days of your time. If you will please send your reply by the owl that brought the letter, we will await your coming no later than the thirtieth of July._

“Unlucky for you, huh?” Harry told the owl, which shook its feathers into place with a soft _whirring_ noise and then pretended to ignore him.

Then he stood there, turning the letter over and over in his fingers, and thinking. He could translate the Ministry’s language well enough; “a formality only” meant that it was something highly important and difficult they were trying to make sound simple. The portrait of Headmaster Dumbledore making a request meant the old man was being seriously obstructive. And “requesting your help in the reopening of Hogwarts” meant…

Harry shook his head. He had left the wizarding world because of arguments over what exactly the Ministry’s role in the reopening of Hogwarts should be. They had wanted to take over the duty of appointing the Headmaster and the school governors, not to mention examining all the classes taught and changing things about. 

Well, and he’d left because they sacked him. But Harry honestly thought he might have gone anyway.

Then there was the bitter shouting and words with the two people he had considered his best friends in the world.

Harry rolled his eyes in irritation. He wasn’t here to remember. He was here to make a decision about whether he would answer the letter or not.

There was no reason for him to do so, looking at it from one angle. The Ministry had told him he wasn’t welcome back, and he doubted that they would give him a voice in the way they ran Hogwarts now. 

On the other hand, what would happen if he went back, spoke to Headmaster Dumbledore’s portrait, and located these “important artifacts,” but forced through a price for doing so first?

Harry smiled. He wrote his response, with a touch here and there of wording that would warn anyone who looked at it that he was returning reluctantly. They would be expecting that, and think they could pat him on the head, offer him a biscuit, and still make him save them all.

Harry _did_ enjoy setting people up to expect one thing and then disorienting them completely.

He paused as he realized one thing—he wouldn’t have time to arrange an appointment with Bradley, at least not one to their satisfaction, before he had to leave. It took a lot out of Bradley to cope with what Harry needed to really relax. He would want several evenings to prepare, and he would try to persuade Harry, as always, to accept something less deep and severe.

Harry shrugged. Spending time with a man like Bradley was one means of getting rid of stress. Going back to the wizarding world and irritating everyone in sight was another.

*

Draco knew he would look ridiculous to anyone peering into the room from the outside: approaching the cauldron with a chair cautiously outstretched before him and a long, braided rope in his free hand.

Then again, most of the people who might have put their heads into the room like that were not experimental potions brewers.

He waited until the bubbles exploding in the cauldron had subsided into silence again. Then he lashed out with the braided rope, hitting the rim and making the room ring with the sweet sound of rapped metal.

The bubbles at once exploded past the rim and reached for him with strong, liquid arms. Draco hit them with the chair. They smoked and burbled and fell back again. Draco smiled grimly. The damn potion could eat even through a Shield Charm, but for some reason, wood defeated it.

This was one of the most exciting potions he had ever developed, for obvious reasons, and also one of the most dangerous, for reasons equally obvious to anyone who read the ingredients list.

If he could just manage to work the potion right, he would have something capable of entering the bodies of animals and plants—and perhaps humans, one day—and manipulating them like puppets according to the will of the person who owned the potion. But he had to perfect it first.

And survive the brewing process, of course.

He stepped slowly to the side, never looking away from the cauldron. A low, sullen rumble came from it, for all the world like a growl, and Draco smiled. He had hoped for it to begin making unusual noises like that. They would facilitate the potion’s entrance into the bodies of animals that also growled, including dogs, wolves, and lions.

He entertained a wistful image of sending an army of wolves against the potions master Galen Herzog, who had reviewed Draco’s last book unflatteringly. Herzog lived in the middle of a dense forest. As long as Draco coordinated the attack with the night of a full moon, no one would ever know that it wasn’t a pack of werewolves gone rogue.

With a sigh, he put the idea aside. He was a long way from that yet, and he wanted to make sure that his creation was functioning on a normal, smaller level for several years before he thought about armies.

The potion seemed to have become calm again, but that was one of its many tricks, and Draco wasn’t fooled. He motioned with the chair, a downwards sweeping movement, and the potion promptly rose as though on vines, lunging for what it thought was the unprotected middle of his body.

(Well, “thought.” Draco didn’t know what the right word was for something that thought without a brain).

He spun in a circle and hit it again with the braided rope, striking something solid a moment before the potion dissolved its vulnerable solidity into a shower of drops. It crashed back into the cauldron again and wailed at him in indignation until Draco kicked the cauldron. Then it shut up in surprise.

“Listen to me,” Draco said in a low voice, which would probably also look stupid or nonsensical to anyone who peered around the corner of the doorframe. “I know all about your little tricks. And you might as well get used to the idea that I’m going to tame you and use you, drink you if I like.”

The potion poked a lump of green substance over the rim. Draco was waiting for it, and tapped it precisely on the head with the rope. It pulled back with a sound remarkably like a whimper.

“Take that as a lesson,” Draco said, and then reached for the leaf of red lettuce he needed to drop in while it was thinking about that. He managed to sneak it over the side, and the potion bubbled and whistled some more before becoming quiet in a way that Draco understood to mean it was harmless now.

He still cast several charms before he approached the cauldron and clasped his hands around the sides. He had been fooled before, and so had other researchers who worked in this rare area of sentient potions.

But nothing attacked, and Draco was able to move to the cauldron to the nest of heated bricks it needed to rest in now and even clean a sticky, stinking cauldron and start to ready the next potion before an owl interrupted him.

Draco sighed as he reached out for the letter. He resented the interruptions, yes, but they produced his livelihood. By far most of his money these days came from the specialty potions, more than half Dark or illegal, that he brewed for those who knew about his talents and could afford them.

He wouldn’t have had to do that, and could have been left alone to research in peace, if the Ministry had bothered to leave his family’s fortune less full of holes than a mouse-gnawed tapestry.

His mood soured further when he realized that the letter bore the Ministry seal. What in the world did they want? He pulled it open more savagely than he probably should have, and then paused and half-shut his eyes. Yes, no one was here to observe him right now, fantasies of audiences notwithstanding, but your own soul could be the most important audience of all.

So Severus had taught him.

Draco’s mouth pulled to one side in a grim smile as he drew the parchment out, preserving the original creases for a moment while he checked for charms on the envelope and letter both. In a strange way, those days immediately after he had fled with Severus from Hogwarts at the end of his sixth year were the best of his life. He and Severus had been alone for some time, moving warily through the countryside as they avoided both the Death Eaters—Draco hadn’t known why they were avoiding the Death Eaters, then—and the patrols of Aurors hunting them. And Severus, apparently for lack of anyone else to teach, had talked to himself, and Draco had listened.

That was the time when Severus had told Draco to start addressing him by his first name, as he was “no longer a professor.” His eyes had grown black when he said that, but Draco thought it was with amusement more than scorn or anger.

And he had talked and talked—about potions techniques, about common Muggle behaviors, about the spells that one might use to disguise oneself and counterfeit Galleons, about the best way to survive under the Dark Lord’s reign. Draco, his mind wiped clean by shock and self-loathing (killing was a simple task; Greyback and Aunt Bella could do it), retained those instructions.

Then they had come back into the Dark Lord’s reach, and Severus had demanded and got the credit for killing Dumbledore, and Draco had gone back to nothing more than bare survival for months that still seemed longer than the six years that had passed since then. 

But Severus had given him a gift worth more than the information itself: the consciousness that there was something higher out there, artistry and grace and control, beyond the pall of blood and death. Potions masters were superior, Severus had taught him, to the politics that swirled around them, however affected by those politics they might be. Someday, when things were settled, Draco thought, he would make potions like the ones Severus had described and live in a setting of calm and order.

He had clung to that hope, that belief, throughout the war, and then afterwards he had made it a reality.

Although Severus was dead, and Draco had never spoken with his portrait, he liked to think that the man would approve of what he had made himself.

The reminiscences had calmed him. Draco turned to the letter.

_Dear Potions master Malfoy:_

_The Ministry requires your help with the reopening of Hogwarts. Certain important artifacts, such as the key of the Headmaster’s office and the Sorting Hat, remain beyond the reach of the new school governors. We know that the portrait of war hero Severus Snape holds some information needed to reach them, but he will not speak with anyone but you. We will await your presence at the school on the thirtieth of July._

Draco leaned back against the wall of his lab and began to laugh. He laughed until his stomach ached and all the strength was gone from his legs, so that he slid down into a heap and muffled the last giggles and hiccoughs in his arms.

They wanted…

The Ministry wanted…

Oh, it was too _much_.

Draco wiped his hand with his eyes and shook his head. He had his own spies inside the Ministry and the rest of the wizarding world that he rarely saw because so much of his time was spent either collecting ingredients or brewing or researching. He knew that the Ministry had not reopened Hogwarts so far because of endless, vicious rows over what form the school should take “under their supervision.” 

One fact his spies and contacts told him again and again, from the seedy rogue Mundungus Fletcher whom Draco supplied with a gin substitute to the elegant Monica Graveling who took the Resurrection Potion that allowed her to see and converse with the spirit of her dead sister. The Ministry planned to reduce the number of Hogwarts Houses to three, banishing Slytherin and anyone who was Sorted there from the school.

Draco had noted the fact as interesting, enraging, or amusing depending on his mood at the time, and thought no further.

But now.

There was never any doubt that he would go, of course. Among other things, Draco wanted to speak with portrait of Severus, and this was an excuse that would replace his nonexistent courage and drive him at last into an office he should have performed long since. And if he was there, he could observe certain facts for himself, gather ingredients from the Forbidden Forest, revisit old memories from Hogwarts’s corridors and classrooms that needed to be confronted, and put an Incendiary Draught in the middle of the Ministry’s plans to destroy his House.

He would, if necessary, demand that price for his aid. But Draco did hope that he could find some more subtle method.

He wrote his acceptance and then went to order the house-elves to pack his clothing. He would, of course, attend to his books, his vials, his cauldrons, and his stasis boxes himself. Those were tasks to be trusted to the clumsy fingers of no less skilled mortal.  
\


	2. Welcome Home

Harry hesitated for a long time before he stepped out into Diagon Alley and walked towards Eeylops Owl Emporium. A few people still turned to stare at him, but two years away from the majority of the wizarding world had done their work. Harry was no longer a subject of continuous gossip or constantly on the front page of the papers.

 _I’m only doing this for Annie’s sake,_ he told himself defensively as he opened the door and heard the weird bell above it whistle and cheep and hoot. _Not because I want to replace Hedwig._

Hermione would have said that he wasn’t replacing Hedwig if he got another owl, but then again, Hermione was wrong about a lot of things.

The man behind the counter was just turning around with a tawny owl on his fist. He had flyaway hair coated with feathers and a long scar next to his eye that Harry thought a beak had probably caused. “Hullo,” he said. “What kind of owl do you want?”

Harry hesitated once more, then shook his head. He might as well do this right if he was going to do it at all. “A swift one,” he said. “I’m going to be distant from my major correspondents for the next few days.” Or weeks, but he hadn’t wanted to think about that yet.

“Well, speed isn’t the major consideration for a distance owl, you know.” The man set the tawny bird gently on a nearby perch and came around the counter, focusing on Harry. If he noticed the lightning bolt scar, he gave no sign. “You need reliability before anything else, and sometimes the slow, stolid types are better for that.”

“But not all of them?” Harry leaned back reluctantly and looked up at the cages hanging overhead. He caught a glimpse of a snowy owl, and quickly turned back to the man. “I want one that’s both reliable and swift, then.”

The man chuckled and moved over to open two wire cages hanging next to each other. The owls within hopped out tamely, and Harry thought he could use that, a bird who was friendly. The man turned around and balanced the birds on his outstretched arms. “These are our best combinations of those two traits. Look your fill.”

Harry focused on the owl on the left. He was small and black, with brown edgings to the feathers. Harry swallowed. Yes, he was dark, but his golden eyes were just too much like Hedwig’s.

“This one,” he said randomly, and turned to the other owl. She was considerably larger, staring at him with orange eyes that at least wouldn’t remind him of the dead. Her feathers were a mixture of different browns, slashed with dark lines and paler patches. “What’s her name? How much is she?”

“You can name her what you wish, of course.” The shopkeeper looked disturbed for the first time, stroking the owl’s foot with one hand while he watched Harry. “And she’s an eagle-owl. Not a good choice for a first-time owner.”

“I had a snowy owl,” Harry managed to say before his throat closed up. He stared blindly into a corner of the shop. He shouldn’t be this sad over it, still, he told himself scathingly. 

Of course, he also still shouldn’t be so angry all the time, or so upset when he remembered the trauma of the war. He didn’t know why time hadn’t healed him the way it was supposed to have healed everyone else, and frankly he didn’t care. The methods he knew of dealing with it worked, when he could use them.

“Ah.” The shopkeeper’s voice was sympathetic now, and soft. “And you lost her?”

Harry blinked and looked up. No matter how much he mourned Hedwig, a public shop wasn’t the place to break down about it. “In the war.”

The man nodded. He seemed to completely understand devotion to owls, which Harry thought was a good sign. “Then it only remains to see if she’s satisfied with you.” He tilted his arm, and the eagle-owl spread her wings and soared towards Harry.

Harry braced himself too late. He hadn’t had a lot of experience with owls in the last few years, after all. Her claws settled on his shoulder, and he winced, reminding himself to buy gloves and pads so that he could handle her safely.

The owl stared at him from so close that her regard was almost painful. She shifted restlessly from one foot to another, and Harry wondered how an owl like her would get along in the Hogwarts Owlery. He started to open his mouth to ask about her track record of living with other birds, but was interrupted as she carefully gripped his chin in one talon and turned him more openly to face her.

“Hold still,” said the shopkeeper. “She’s evaluating you.”

Harry didn’t much care for the “evaluation.” He stared back, wondering if that was a sign of aggression to owls the way it sometimes was for dogs. The owl dropped his chin and fanned her wings out, beating them up and down in a way that probably indicated something, though Harry wasn’t sure what.

“She likes you,” said the shopkeeper, sounding relieved. “Now, you’ll need food, of course, and a traveling cage, though I should tell you she much prefers to fly, and there are complimentary treats that—”

“What do you call her?” Harry interrupted. The owl was still on his shoulder, looking at him as if he had passed one test but was about to fail the next, and he thought she would be easier to control if he had a name.

“Well, Catherine,” said the man, blinking as though the question were strange. “Just a fancy of mine. She reminds me of someone I used to know. But you can, of course, give her a unique name. Most owners of owls prefer to.”

Harry shook his head, grimly amused. He’d been in a Muggle household last week, interviewing a small boy and his parents who had agreed to send him to a magical primary school, and had seen an image of a woman facing a sword, her eyes full of pain but her mouth set and defiant. The boy’s mother had said that was Saint Catherine, who had been beheaded because the torture wheel they’d intended to kill her on broke when she touched it. The look in _her_ eyes wasn’t so different from the owl’s. “Catherine will do.”

*

Draco landed in Hogsmeade with a faint bump but no sound—he had perfected silent Apparition in the last few years, when he had needed to reach gardens and private preserves that certain people would rather he not harvest ingredients in—and looked around with interest. It was some time since he had visited the town proper.

A few people turned to stare at him, but most of the ones in sight carried on darting in and out of shops, arguing in the streets, or heading towards the pubs with looks of weariness on their faces. An ordinary life, an ordinary place. Draco wondered if they missed the students who hadn’t come for the past several years because Hogwarts was shut.

He did roll his eyes over that as he started down the path that led to the school. _The Ministry ties up the opening for years because they’re arguing over protocol, and they still imagine that their being in charge of the running is a_ good _thing?_

The ground rolled under him, the track broadened, and there were the gates, open but with a small group gathered in front of them. Draco raised his eyebrows and quickened his pace.

“Potions master Malfoy, I’m so grateful you could come.” The man who stepped forwards to pump his hand was a tall, thin stick Draco had seen in the papers more than once, a kind of undersecretary to the Minister. He had a broad smile and small, cold, black eyes that should contradict the smile for anyone who wasn’t a complete fool. His name was Derek Wimpledink. “On behalf of the Ministry of Magic, welcome.”

Draco nodded in response and turned to look over the rest of the group. There was the usual collection of Ministry flunkies, Professor Flitwick, a plump woman in flowing purple robes whose purpose here Draco didn’t know, and—

“Well, well,” Draco said. “Greetings, Weasley, Granger.”

The man and woman he was looking at moved closer together. They both wore plain brown robes, not the bright Auror scarlet, at least for Weasley, that Draco would have expected. And they didn’t respond, either, which Draco thought was rude of them.

“Professor Granger and Professor Weasley will be teaching at the school when it’s open again,” said Wimpledink, following Draco’s gaze. “History of Magic and Defense Against the Dark Arts will benefit from their presence.”

Draco nodded without looking away from the pair. Their presence was a surprise for more than one reason, now that he could think clearly. They had opposed the Ministry taking over Hogwarts in the first place. He wondered what had made them decide to cooperate, and then smiled to himself. In Weasley’s case, it could have been a large enough wage.

“We’re waiting for only one more,” Wimpledink was saying, “and then we can try to confront the roots of this problem.”

A noisy Apparition answered him, and then Draco heard a horribly familiar voice say, “Oh, fuck, Malfoy, not _you_.”

He took his time turning around, because that would let him get his face under control. Then he inclined his head and murmured, “Oh, dear, Potter. No one told me you were coming, or I would have been ready to greet you properly.”

Potter stood in the middle of the path behind him, one hand in his pocket as he studied Draco. He had a satchel slung over his shoulder, for all the world as if he were still a schoolboy, and eyes that were darker than Draco remembered them being. Of course, that wouldn’t be hard, Draco thought. He didn’t remember Potter’s eyes all that well.

_Except for the way they looked when he stared over his shoulder at the Fiendfyre._

Draco shrugged a bit. The nightmares weren’t something he could stop, which made it stupid to try. Severus would have taught him that, except that Draco had already known it when he tried.

“No one told me you were coming, either,” Potter said, and his eyes flashed at Draco before he turned his head to study Wimpledink and the rest of his merry little band. Draco followed his glance, because it was going to be amusing to see Potter start at the sight of his friends.

What he did, though, was more amusing than jumping. Instead, he firmed his hold on the satchel and gritted his teeth, so much that Draco could hear it from where he stood. And although Granger and Weasley were trying to look stoic and aloof, they wore expressions of acute discomfort.

 _That’s interesting,_ Draco decided, and decided also that he would hoard the information for further use. He had plenty of purposes in coming to Hogwarts already, plenty of things to keep him busy, but this would add an extra spice.

Potter marched up the path with a dignity that surprised Draco until he remembered that the man had been in the Aurors before he got sacked for—something. Seeing the way he leaned forwards on his toes, the air around him turning hot and shimmering, Draco wondered if it was for lack of control over his magic.

“I’m here,” Potter said. “Where’s the old man?”

“The portrait, you mean?” Wimpledink had the slightly wrinkled nose of someone who valued clearer language than Potter was currently using. “Upstairs, of course, in the Headmaster’s office. At least, the one _you’re_ speaking to.” He turned to Draco with a determined politeness that Draco thought would have cut anyone more sensitive than Potter. Of course, it was impossible to be less sensitive. “The one you are speaking to, former Professor and Headmaster Snape, is in the dungeons.”

Draco nodded. He had known that, despite his lack of courage in coming to visit.

“Why do you need to talk to Snape?” Potter asked. He seemed to be addressing Draco directly, rather than Wimpledink. “They told me Dumbledore held the information they needed to break into a hidden place, but was hiding it for some reason.”

“That’s what they told me, too,” Draco said. “Only it was Snape who supposedly had the information.”

Potter spun around and raised his wand. It pointed straight at Wimpledink’s forehead, and Draco heard the man swallow a whimper. Well, he might do the same thing if he was on the end of the Savior’s wand, though of course he would conceal it rather better.

“What were you planning?” Potter asked, in a voice like boulders grinding against one another. “That we’d never run into each other? That we’d arrive at different times? _Answer_ me, dumbarse.”

*

Harry knew what Hermione’s expression would be without looking at her: a mingling of resignation, sadness, and disapproval. He knew that Ron would be leaning forwards, half-wanting to support Harry but also conscious that he was going too far.

It pained him to realize how well he still knew them, even after two years’ exile.

The Ministry functionary rolled his eyes down to the wand and then looked back into Harry’s face. Harry reluctantly supposed that made him tougher than some of the others. But he still wasn’t moving until Harry got an answer. No one had told him that he was going to be working with Malfoy, of all people.

For that matter, no one had told him he was going to be here for as long as it sounded like the task would take, if it was complex enough that Snape and Dumbledore shared the knowledge between them.

The Ministry man cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Potter, if you’ll let us explain, I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Then explain,” Harry said, not moving his wand. It wasn’t as if it was heavy.

Hermione stepped forwards. Harry knew it because he could hear the rustling noise of her robe coming from the direction she’d been standing, but he also knew it because he recognized her step. It seemed that bonds he’d thought he’d torn up when he left still had their anchors in his flesh.

“Be reasonable, Harry,” she said. “I saw the Ministry message before it was sent. It told the truth. They need the Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor and a few other artifacts to reopen Hogwarts, and they can’t do that without information from the portraits, and they can’t talk to the portraits without you.”

“How strange, Hermione,” Harry said, and kept the flunky in his line of sight. “To find you working with the Ministry and approving their messages and all the rest of it. But then, I reckon I should have expected that.”

The air between them seemed to throb, though Harry knew no one else there but Hermione and Ron would feel it the same way. The name he had called her in their last conversation, the one that had destroyed everything between them and ensured no owls for the last two years, still lingered.

_Traitor._

“She’s right, mate,” Ron said. “It’s true that they can’t open the school without you and Malfoy.”

Harry twitched a little. The reminder that Malfoy stood beside him was like a needle through his ear. Then again, Malfoy was actually the least of his problems right now, which might make him the most tolerable person to work with.

“And what are you going to do if you _do_ reopen Hogwarts?” he asked, still watching the Ministry man. “I think last time there was talk of appointing the Headmaster and the governors, so that the school would be run under your auspices.”

“There was also talk of abolishing Slytherin House, the last I heard,” Malfoy volunteered unexpectedly, “and using the Sorting Hat to find and send away the students who _would_ be Sorted into that House.”

Harry turned his head. Malfoy was standing there with arms folded, looking mildly amused. The wind didn’t touch a hair of his head, Harry noted. He probably had some charm in place to ensure that it wouldn’t, either.

“Why?” Harry asked.

“They still blame us for the war,” Malfoy answered. “They somehow think that banishing children from the school and not training them would be the same thing as not training any Dark wizards.” He paused. “May I say how impressed I am that you know a big word like _auspices,_ Potter?”

Harry grunted and turned back to the Ministry flunky. “I wonder why Snape’s portrait refuses to help you?”

The man sighed and finally seemed inclined to speak for himself. “Mr. Malfoy has unfortunately misrepresented a complex situation,” he said. “The Minister is still considering several actions that could be undertaken in order to better the education of our future’s more precious resources.”

“You’re his speechwriter,” Harry said. “I know the type. You make words mean what they don’t _want_ to mean.”

Malfoy stepped up to stand at Harry’s shoulder, staring at him in interest—or perhaps at the Ministry flunky in interest, Harry thought. It wasn’t as though he had any idea of how Malfoy’s twisted, perverted mind worked. He did, however, think how strange it was that he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Malfoy against the side his best friends were on. 

_Or former best friends._ Harry still didn’t know how to think about them after the horrible conversation that had taken place the last time they’d seen each other.

“Are we going to stand here discussing irrelevant matters all day, or are we going to go inside and let you begin your speech with the portraits?” The flunky had finally begun to look like a real person instead of a patient martyr. “After all, that is what you came here for.”

“Why should I speak with Dumbledore and help you if you’re going to treat the school badly?” Harry asked. 

“I’m not the right one to reassure you about this,” the man said, smoothly and instantly. “There are other Ministry officials who would have the level of power that might content you. I will contact them when we are inside the school.”

Harry snorted in disgust. There was an old and long-abused Ministry tactic: passing the responsibility up the line so that someone else could be afflicted with it. On the other hand, he didn’t see how he could do much more here. It was only too obvious that the others in the group lacked the courage to interfere, or they would have already.

“Then let’s go,” he said. “But you might as well note that _I’m_ not going to talk to any portraits until you hand me a good reason to be content with the Ministry’s goals.”

The Ministry man looked as if he wanted to do a little dance of rage, but instead he cleared his throat and nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Though I grieve that you do not take a lesson in calm and poise from Potions master Malfoy.”

 _Of course the git is a Potions master,_ Harry thought, and opened his mouth to say that as far as he was concerned, Malfoy could go fuck himself. Malfoy spoke before he could, voice so smooth and inviting it took Harry a moment to get past the tone of his words to their content.

“I am afraid you still misunderstand. I will not be speaking to Professor Snape, either, until the Ministry answers Potter’s challenges.”

Harry turned to gape at Malfoy. He only got a raised eyebrow and a supremely irritating smile of the kind that the prat probably saved up for non-Slytherins in return.

*

Draco knew he was taking a risk, allying himself with Potter. Apart from the danger to his own goals and to the cooperation with the Ministry he suspected would be a necessity in the end, he didn’t yet understand everything about the complexities of the situation. Why were Potter and Weasley-and-Granger on opposite sides? Why had Wimpledink assumed he would be able to handle Potter with no trouble? Why did Potter move with his magic boiling around him, constantly on edge, even well before anyone had antagonized him?

On the other hand, the Ministry seemed more confrontational and patronizing than Draco had expected. It would do no great harm to use Potter as an icebreaker and let the heavy blows fall on him.

Wimpledink led the way up to Hogwarts, with the rest of the people who had been waiting with him straggling behind in a rough line. Weasley-and-Granger dropped back to try and talk to Potter, but he gave them a freezing glare the likes of which Draco hadn’t seen since Severus was alive, and they hurried up again.

“What brings you back here, Potter, beyond the obvious?” Draco asked. “And why are your best friends avoiding you?”

That got him the freezing glare in return, but Draco returned it with a bland look, and waited. Anyone could see that Potter was exploding with the wish to talk about himself, as usual. Enough silence would produce an effect.

Draco made a mental note to try silence on his sentient potion when he worked with it here. It was a stimulus that he hadn’t thought useful so far, because the potion would simply hide in the cauldron, but he had reached a more advanced stage now and should start thinking of subtler challenges.

Potter, though, only stamped along the path with his eyebrows bent down and his face shut like a door. Draco shrugged one shoulder and looked away from him, up at Hogwarts.

The Ministry had done a fine job of rebuilding the towers, Draco thought critically, and the gates, and restoring the strip of land between the front doors and the lake that had been thoroughly blasted and burned in the battle. Every stone was in place, or at least enough that Draco’s memories couldn’t tell him they looked any different. The grass grew in neat patterns. The lake shimmered in the reluctant sunlight. The castle might pass as magical and strange to a first-year who had never seen it.

But.

Draco could notice other differences, ones that might not matter to a Muggleborn. The Forbidden Forest had been cut back, leaving only stumps where the outer edge of trees had once began. A railing now surrounded the edge of each tower. The gates were lower than they had been, the doors made of lighter wood, as if to reassure timid children that they wouldn’t find anything truly frightening inside.

Draco suspected the Ministry had done as much in the name of safety as it had in the name of attractiveness. That didn’t keep him from criticism, especially as one of their “safety” procedures was apparently to banish Slytherins.

They stepped into the entrance hall, smaller and darker and cooler than Draco remembered it. Wimpledink raised a grand wrist. “Welcome, witches and wizards, to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

“What you’ve left of it,” Potter said, not even in a whisper.

Wimpledink gave Potter a look of open hatred. Draco raised an eyebrow. He wondered if the Ministry had deliberately sent their least diplomatic man, on the idea that Potter wouldn’t be diplomatic anyway and there was no point in using soft words, or if Wimpledink had angled for the position for his own reasons.

Or if the Ministry simply had no idea how to handle Potter. They hadn’t made the most of their genuine hero when they had him.

“The Headmaster’s portrait is in his office,” said Wimpledink, speaking through gritted teeth and trying to pretend that he wasn’t. “Shall we proceed?”

“Why should we, when you have admitted that you can’t answer Potter’s questions and you have to wait until someone comes who can?” Draco cocked his head. “Show us to the quarters prepared for us instead.”

Potter looked positively ill. “I’m staying in Hogsmeade,” he said quickly. “I’ll wait here until the Ministry representative comes.”

“We’d thought you would stay in Hogsmeade, too, Potions master,” Wimpledink told Draco. “I’m afraid that no quarters have been prepared for you.”

Draco remained still and let his silence speak for itself. He was giving up valuable time to come here, he had a large number of trunks floating behind him, and they proposed to make him pay for his own space and meals?

Wimpledink’s face turned red, and he looked at the ground and mumbled something that might have been an apology. Draco added a further hypothesis to his collection of them concerning Wimpledink’s presence. Perhaps he was simply young and inexperienced, and had taken over something that was his due to the functions of his office, but ought not to properly belong to him.

“You can stay in the dungeons, Mr. Malfoy,” said McGonagall then. Her voice was a shadow of its old firmness, Draco thought. Perhaps fighting with the Ministry for six years over Hogwarts had worn her down. “There are rooms the house-elves can prepare without trouble, and I’m sure that you would want to be close to your old House.”

“The House that’s in danger of vanishing,” Draco said. “Mr. Wimpledink, can you verify that rumor?”

More flushing, more mumbling. Draco had expected no more, but he had thought he’d ask. He cast a _Tempus_ Charm and asked, “How soon can we expect your replacement?”

A worse flush than before, but Wimpledink managed to look up and into Draco’s eyes as he said, “I am going to owl now, Potions master. Someone should be here within two or three hours.”

“Excellent,” Draco said, and turned to follow McGonagall down to the dungeons. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Potter making again for the doors to Hogwarts, with Granger and Weasley both chasing after him while trying to look as if they weren’t running.

The spirit of mischief that not all of Severus’s teaching had been able to tame made Draco add, “Coming, Potter?”

Potter turned and stared at him. Draco couldn’t as easily see the shimmer of uncontrolled magic inside a building, but he thought it was still there. The last few moments would have done nothing for Potter’s tension, after all. He bared his teeth now, as if he wanted to tear _something_ apart and Draco would serve as well anything else.

“What would I want with your company, Malfoy?”

“There are things that I could tell you,” Draco said. “Since we’ve been summoned for such similar purposes, they might be to your advantage. But I forgot that Harry Potter can stand on his own.” He bowed and started to turn away again.

“Wait.”

Draco turned to see Potter striding towards him and Granger and Weasley reversing their course like mice who’d spied a cat. Potter gave no sign that he’d noticed them. He halted next to Draco and looked him up and down, maintaining the same expression of arrogant disdain that had polluted his face ever since he arrived here. That expression, while better than the wide smile that Draco had so often seen him wear as a schoolboy, had its drawbacks; it would not let Draco see how fine his features were.

 _Fine?_ How Severus would laugh at that.

But Draco did not have Severus’s problems with Potter or his father, problems he had begun to guess the source of when Severus’s will gave Draco certain photographs and a few letters. He could extend an invitation if he wanted to, and it would be only Potter’s fault if he refused. He waited now.

“If you’re fucking with me,” Potter whispered, “you should know that I can destroy you.”

“You shouldn’t make the most dramatic threat first,” Draco murmured. “If your opponent stands up to you, it renders the rest of what you can do useless.”

Potter stepped back and stared at Draco the way he might a statue he was considering buying. The greatest of Draco’s rewards at that moment was the utterly flummoxed expression on Weasley’s face, which he saw from a corner of his eye.

“You talk good sense sometimes,” Potter said. “Interesting. Yes, Malfoy, we’ll have a discussion.”

“Harry,” Granger said, in what was a tone of genuine anguish if Draco was any judge. Of course, the only people he normally got to judge on such things with were addicts craving the latest dose of their potions, so he wouldn’t venture to say for sure it was authentic.

“Shut up, Hermione.” The words were flat and not particularly blistering, but the glare Potter gave her was. She shrank back against Weasley, who looked as though he was struggling to choose among seven different insults.

All this time, Draco noticed, McGonagall and Flitwick stood there silently, as if Potter and his friends were participants in a drama for their own personal amusement. Another thing he would have to investigate.

“This way, then,” Draco told Potter, and set off down to the dungeons with Potter at his side and the former Head of Gryffindor leading the way. He hoped that Severus would appreciate the irony in that when Draco told him.

*

Harry had known he was going to hate the Ministry’s iron attempts to force him to obey its will, but he hadn’t realized _how much_ he would hate it.

The flunkey—Wimpledink—had put up a delay, and meanwhile everyone else went along with it. It made Harry’s heart roast to see how meekly McGonagall accepted the Ministry’s interference. And Flitwick hadn’t done anything about it, either. 

Hogwarts had been closed for six years. Maybe they were tired of fighting and thought the Ministry was the best chance to get the school running again. Maybe they planned to introduce changes later, into a living body of students where they would be more difficult for the Ministry to detect.

But Harry thought they’d given up, and he was disgusted.

And Ron and Hermione…

Harry shifted his shoulders to settle them. He shouldn’t think about these things when he was walking beside Malfoy. His new old nemesis had quicker eyes and a sharper intelligence than Harry would have liked. He might notice something wrong and begin to link events together in a chain that would bind Harry to the past.

But the thoughts were there no matter whether Harry wanted them or not. He’d met Ron and Hermione in these dungeons on that last day, after all, coming back from trying to speak with Snape’s portrait about the changes the Ministry would make. Snape had done nothing but turn his back. Dead or alive, he wouldn’t forgive.

 _“We’re worried about you,” Hermione had said. Her face was bright wet with tears. Harry knew what she and Ron had to have been talking about. It was obvious, and they had discussed it before, and when would she leave him the fuck alone? “We just—Harry, you have to consider that maybe this pathology is a result of what happened to you during the war. And before it. Being manipulated by Dumbledore and other forceful adult males all your life. Don’t you think that wanting someone to bind you and order you around is the result of twisted psychology? It’s not normal. It’s not_ you _.”_

_Harry knew she thought those words. She had hinted at it before when Harry first told her and Ron how he sometimes sought stress relief. And she had been furious when Harry revealed the full extent of Dumbledore’s manipulations, instead of supporting his plans, like Harry thought she would, because they worked._

_But she’d never said anything like this before, these statements that went off like detonations in his chest. Harry folded his arms across his chest and nodded slowly. “My sexuality is pathological, is it?”_

“ _Harry, I never said—”_

_“Yes, you did,” Harry said, and seized the knife of knowledge he’d never planned to use and twisted it. “So everything that you two enjoy—the way you like Ron to hold you down on the bed and fuck you hard—goes back to your psychology, too. Mustn’t it? The way you like a bit of pain, that comes from the way Bellatrix tortured you. And his hold on your wrists reminds you of the way that the Snatchers dragged us around. And—”_

“ _Stop it, mate!” Ron had surged forwards, his fists flying, and Harry had raised a Shield Charm. Hermione stood there, too shocked to cry, one hand over her heart as if his speech had really cut her there._

 _“No,” Harry said, and he kept his voice cool, and he meant every vicious word. “Why should I? She’s convinced this_ one _thing, this_ one _thing that I only do every few months when I need it, goes back to the war and that that’s bad. Well, then her sexuality goes back to the war and it’s bad, too. Why not? She was tortured. I never was. She went through some of the same things I did. It only makes sense.”_

_Ron had stopped, his arms falling to his sides. “Bastard,” he whispered. Hermione was crying, now, with little hiccoughing sounds. “Do you know how long it took her to get comfortable with what she wanted? Do you know how much this has hurt her?”_

“ _Do you know how long it took me to figure out what worked, and what would keep me from destroying everything in sight?” Harry looked back at Hermione. “I told you that, trusting you, and she’s the one who decided it was a disease. She’s a traitor. Tell me, Hermione, how many Healers have you talked with about me?”_

_Hermione wrapped her arms around herself and whispered, “Just one.”_

“ _Traitor,” Harry had repeated, and then walked past them, and up towards the light, where he knew he would find the Ministry’s news of his being sacked from the Aurors waiting._

_They didn’t try to stop him._

“Mr. Potter, I would appreciate it if you didn’t burn down the dungeons before we reach Mr. Malfoy’s rooms. Among other things, it would involve burning Severus’s portrait.”

Harry blinked and looked up. He had honestly almost forgotten where he was, caught back in that moment of twisted time when he had lost his best friends and his root of security in the wizarding world both at once. And his body shimmered with transparent green flame, moving back and forth in response to silent winds.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he murmured, and pulled back the fire into himself with an effort. McGonagall nodded and strode ahead. Harry knew the abrupt movements were, among other things, attempts to hide her discomfort with his magic. He had seen that tactic so many times by now it no longer held any surprises.

He glanced sideways to see what Malfoy’s coping technique would be, and found him staring directly, calmly, at Harry, one fist beneath his chin as though he were considering a Potions problem. 

“Aren’t you worried that I’ll burn down the dungeons?” Harry asked him.

“Why should I be?” Malfoy took his hand away from his chin to gesture at the dungeon walls. “One improvement that I think we can commend the Ministry for is the addition of very powerful anti-fire wards. When I see that your magic can devour such wards, I’ll worry. Not until then.” He continued walking, though he kept one eye on Harry as if to see what he would do when confronted with this bit of wisdom.

“You’ve changed,” Harry said after a moment. He saw no reason to conceal his shock if Malfoy refused to conceal his fearlessness.

“More than you know.” Malfoy gave him a faint smile. “Now. _Do_ you intend to discuss a possible alliance with me, or continue to be as rude and difficult as possible?”

McGonagall drew in a snort of air that sounded like a stifled chuckle. Harry glared ahead at her, but she continued stolidly walking, presenting a back that he couldn’t see through as easily as a face.

“I’ll cooperate,” he said at last. He didn’t think he would have needed help if the situation had been less complex in even one dimension—somewhere else than Hogwarts, without the portraits of two men he owed debts of both honor and disgust to, with his best friends who seemed to feel they were wronged hovering in the background and the Ministry trying to stymie him and months having gone past since his last stress relief session. But all those things were present, so he would accept it.

Malfoy nodded briskly. “Excellent.”

“These are your rooms,” McGonagall said suddenly, stopping and throwing back a door that Harry hadn’t even seen.

It took Harry a long moment to recognize the chambers beyond the door, and when he did, he wanted to let the fire flare up again. It took him a supreme effort to keep it inside his body and preserve some semblance of a neutral expression on his face.

They had changed Snape’s rooms. Now they were wide and spacious, with enchanted windows pumping in light from three walls and torches blazing on the other, as though the Ministry assumed that all the darkness found here was merely physical. The chairs that stood together in companionable twos and threes were red and gold. The shelves held modern treatises on Potions making, without a sign of Snape’s dusty old books that had still been there when Harry last came two years ago to speak with the portrait. And there were no vials, cauldrons, or other apparatus to make Potions anywhere in sight.

“Once again, Potter’s mouth is so wide open that I can see straight into his skull and divine that he has learned nothing in the last few years.”

Harry raised his eyes. The portrait of Snape was still there, placed above one of the bookshelves next to a window. He still looked the same as he had been—well, why wouldn’t he? Harry thought in the next instant—dressed in black robes with a scroll of dark green along the side. He had a desk, a table, a shelf with what looked like _his_ books and a cauldron burning and bubbling in the picture with him. The frame was dusty gold.

Harry caught his eye once and then looked away. He didn’t think he could continue to study Snape and not be overwhelmed by the memories, which would probably make him look like a gaping idiot.

In turning his head, he got to see the complicated expression that came over Malfoy’s face, and decided that he wasn’t the only one struggling not to drown here.

*

 

He was the same.

Severus himself had taught Draco to be suspicious of magical portrait-painters. They promised far more than they could deliver, Severus said, gazing into one of the campfires they had built during the nights of their escape. This one was in an abandoned Muggle shack. Draco could still smell the odors of dust and dirt and something killed bloodily not far away if he concentrated.

“Magical portraits are a _portion_ of the person they represent,” Severus told the air or the flames, and Draco’s listening ears, which he never chose to acknowledge. “Not the whole. Painters, of course, like to claim they are, especially if they can give them the original’s most recent memories. But they claim that to be seen as better at their jobs, and so hired again. It is not true.”

Severus had sounded certain. Draco, when conversing with the portraits of his grandparents, had no reason to believe that it wasn’t true.

But still, there he was, black eyes the same as ever, smile still twisted, one hand resting on the cauldron as he leaned forwards to study Draco.

“The latecomer and the idiot,” he said, and his eyes shifted to McGonagall. “And the cat.”

“How flattering to be given a neutral nickname,” McGonagall said dryly. She was comfortable with him, Draco thought, while he structured his thoughts carefully to avoid absorbing what Severus had called _him_. For the first time since Draco had seen her again, McGonagall moved with the brisk step and the stern face he remembered. “Mr. Malfoy is here to stay in your rooms and speak with you, Severus. And Mr. Potter is here to speak with Albus’s portrait, if he will agree.”

Severus narrowed his eyes and drew himself back like a snake about to strike. Draco found himself wondering if magical portrait-painters could also add traits that weren’t there. He didn’t remember that particular gesture.

“So it has come,” Severus murmured, and then, while McGonagall started to summon house-elves to dust and clean, he focused his attention on Draco again.

It was one thing to carry one’s old mentor in the mind, Draco thought, and another thing to face him again. He took a deep breath and moved carefully forwards, trying to brace himself for the criticism. “I’m sorry I never came before,” he murmured.

“I am only a picture of the man who protected you and kept you from having to splinter your soul with killing,” Severus replied at once. “Why would you think it was important to see me?”

Draco winced and sought for a suitable reply. Behind him, Potter said, “I see that you haven’t picked up any politeness from the other portraits. Probably none of them want to come near you. Have you tried washing your hair?”

Severus leaned forwards, ready for combat. “I can see that you have not managed to make yours obedient to a comb.”

Draco stepped between them and shook his head at Severus. “He’s an ally against the Ministry,” he said, his voice unexpectedly calm, at least to his own ears. Who knew what Potter or Severus might have been expecting? “Please don’t taunt him.” He turned his head and fixed Potter with a gentle gaze. “The same goes for you.”

“If you knew what he said to me when I was last here—” Potter began.

“Don’t,” Draco snapped.

Potter blinked and fell silent, looking back and forth from him to Severus. Then he shrugged. “If he can hold his tongue,” he muttered, “then I’ll listen.”

“Am I to be managed under the same precept, when he was the one who began the insults?’ Severus asked. Draco looked back and saw that his pose was familiar this time, as if he were readying himself to resist physical attack from an enemy. His wand in his hand and his guarded eyes above the automatic sneer betrayed that.

“I’m sure that Potter is very sorry he began his reacquaintance with you like that.” Draco turned and gave Potter a glare.

Potter glared back for a few instants, arms folded as if anticipating an attack himself, then snorted and flipped a hand. “Why not? I’m sorry.”

Draco looked at Severus. He had settled against the rim of his cauldron again, and regarded them both with the sort of lazy glance Draco had seen dissolve into action at a moment’s notice. “Very well,” he said. “I accept his half-hearted apology. And I intend to talk to you when there are no other living ears here to listen.”

McGonagall turned towards the portrait and frowned. “I never understood why you refused to trust me with the keys to finding those artifacts, Severus.” Her injured dignity filled her voice, but was at least quiet, Draco thought, unlike the scene that Granger would have made. “You must know that I care as much about Hogwarts as you do.”

“I care for Hogwarts not at all,” Severus said, with his lip jerking sideways. Draco recognized the signs of a lie, but didn’t think that McGonagall would. “I care for the fact that your precious Albus, in death as in life, has laid certain rules on me that I cannot break.”

McGonagall sighed and turned to Draco. “The house-elves will bring this back to livable conditions within a short time, Mr. Malfoy.”

“Thank you,” Draco said, and then waited until she got the point. Her nostrils flared, but she went to the door and opened it.

“We are not the enemy,” she said over her shoulder. “And there are good people in the Ministry who want only to reform the school so as to bring it into line with practical principles. I wish you would not despise all of them.”

No one in the room answered her, probably because her self-evidently sugared words deserved none, though Potter’s face burned as if he would like to. McGonagall stepped through the door and shut it, and Draco moved his hand in the quick motion that would trigger the wards Severus favored. They still engaged, which reassured Draco that no one had touched the deeper levels of these rooms.

“It is good that you have come at last,” Severus said. He was leaning forwards when Draco turned back to the portrait, and seemed prepared to ignore Potter’s existence. “If you had come earlier, then I could have told you that Dumbledore wanted to summon Potter, and we could have avoided these games.”

“If you think that I’d answer a summons from Malfoy without a question,” Potter retorted, “being a portrait _has_ affected your brain.”

Draco once again found himself forced into the role of peacemaker as Severus began a spell Draco knew would prevent Potter from using the loo comfortably for a week. “It’s better this way,” he said loudly, and held Severus’s eye until he grudgingly lowered his wand. “It would have been difficult to force access to the school through Ministry guards and wards.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Severus, with the slow tone that he used towards all practical suggestions he hadn’t thought of himself. “Nevertheless, this game was meant to move much faster. Dumbledore never intended that Hogwarts should remain closed for six years.”

“Acknowledged,” Draco said, and Summoned a chair across the floor so that he could sit down. Even if these weren’t the chairs that he would have chosen to furnish Severus’s rooms, they were comfortable. He noticed from the corner of his eye that Potter had no hesitation in drawing up a seat of his own. “What ‘game’ is this?”

Severus looked once at the door, nodded, and then sat down in his chair and clasped his hands on his knees. Draco’s heart quickened despite himself. He recognized that teaching posture from fires at night and private sessions in Severus’s office that had been called “detentions” to placate other professors.

“Albus was concerned about what would happen after his death,” Severus began. “You know now that he was dying for most of a year, and had time to plan.”

Draco swallowed and nodded. It had been beyond humiliating to be told that Dumbledore knew about Draco’s attempts to murder him all along and was more concerned with trying to save Draco, as if he was still a child, but it was also a revelation that he had come to terms with years ago.

“Among other things, he did not wish to see the school taken over by the Ministry, and since this was the year after they attempted to place the bitch Umbridge in the Headmaster’s position, he had no doubt they would try.” Severus’s nostrils flared delicately. “I agreed with him, and I helped him cast the wards that are now buried in the stones of the school itself, only to be undone by speaking the proper words. The wards will not only keep the Sorting Hat and other needful things hidden, but also prevent any repairs or reforms made to the school from taking hold unless done by wizards of good heart and true devotion to the end of the students’ education.”

Draco stared. He had heard of such magic, of course, but it was even more experimental than sentient potions. “How did you manage that?” he demanded.

Severus somehow managed to look down his nose at Draco, despite his nose being only a daub of paint. “Remember who we are speaking of, Draco. This was _Albus Dumbledore_ , and he knew more about magic than the Dark Lord himself. Than any thirty wizards.”

Draco raised his eyebrows. He could have made an issue of the undertone of pride in Severus’s voice, and the fact that Severus still seemed to prize Dumbledore’s reputation far beyond what he had told Draco he did in life, but he saw no reason to. “All right,” Draco said. “Say this was possible. Why us? Why couldn’t you have told the words to someone else, like McGonagall, and let her negotiate with the Ministry for a fairer settlement?”

Severus grimaced and touched one hand to his forehead the way he sometimes had when a fleck of potion had landed there. “Because our former selves were _too_ clever. Albus feared what might happen if my mental shields broke down and the Dark Lord realized I was a spy and managed to remove the knowledge of the wards from my head along with everything else. Those wards might make Hogwarts a sanctuary in times of war, superior to any other.”

“But that didn’t happen,” Potter interrupted. Draco could have wished he would express his next words more diplomatically, but he said what Draco was thinking. “Why didn’t the wards hold back the Death Eaters?”

Whoever the painter was, limited or not, he had done a fine job, Draco thought, in capturing Severus’s perfect pained expression in the face of a Harry Potter witticism. “Because my former self knew the words to unlock them, of course. And he felt he must to maintain his cover as a spy. Albus considered that all-important.”

Draco nodded. “And you and the portrait version of Dumbledore no longer know the words to unlock them, I take it.”

Severus shook his head. “Those words are guarded by a series of riddles. We retain the knowledge of the riddles, but not of their answers.” He paused, and then added, in a tone Draco had never heard him use before, alive or painted, “I…do not remember much about how I came to be here. In fact, I have very few memories of my former self’s last six months, and have had to rely on others for the details. My belief is that my former self cast a spell that ensured only he, and he alone, would know the full sequence of riddles and unlocking words after Albus died. And, of course, that means that the portrait version of Albus does not have them, either.”

Draco raised his eyebrows. It sounded unnecessarily convoluted; he was sure that he himself would have come up with a more elegant and graceful solution. Then again, he had not had the charge of hundreds of students on his shoulders during that war. His burdens had seemed too heavy to carry during that time, and he had not borne them well. “So we need to solve the riddles and find those words, which will enable us to undo the wards.”

Severus looked relieved for the summary. “Yes.”

“Why us, though?” Potter again asked the question burning on the tip of Draco’s tongue. Draco frowned and hoped he would stop that soon. “Like he said, you could have trusted anyone with the riddles, including McGonagall.”

“I trust only Draco,” Severus said harshly.

Draco felt as though someone had splashed a great draught of Firewhisky down his throat. Even as his mind rushed to point out that the words could not be completely true, because this Severus also still trusted Dumbledore, it was a balm.

“And Dumbledore only trusts me?” Potter was eyeing the portrait skeptically. “I find that hard to believe, with as far as his trust extended during his lifetime.”

 _Even to you_. Draco could hear the words as easily as if Potter had spoken them. Severus’s face tightened again. “Rather say that he trusts only you to do something this time-consuming and potentially risky,” Severus said silkily. “You made something of a specialty of solving mysteries during your Hogwarts days, and surviving the challenges posed by those mysteries.”

“Ron and Hermione did, too,” said Potter, and here his thoughts split apart from Draco’s, because Draco had been about to ask the far more important question of _what_ challenges those were, and whether they were life-threatening.

“They have given some of their allegiance to the Ministry,” Severus said. “Not, I believe, the whole, but enough that they wish to see Hogwarts open and functioning before anything else. With Granger’s reforming impulse, no doubt she believes she can best change the structure from the inside.”

Potter snorted. “Yeah, that sounds like her,” he muttered, and the bitterness in his voice sparked against Draco’s senses. He really _would_ have to find out what that was about.

“I think we’ve established that we’re the only ones who can handle this, and that it would be for the best if we worked together,” Draco sad. “Unless Potter has doubts on that score.”

Potter blinked and looked up. Draco didn’t remember him having such a tendency to disappear into his own head before this, but then again, that wasn’t a trait that one spent much time looking for in schoolboy rivals. “What? Oh, no. No, I don’t.”

“I have considerable ones,” Severus said, shaking his head sadly, the way he had when he told Draco about a student who might make a decent Potions master if ninety percent of his brain was replaced. “But this is not my decision. It is Albus’s.” He looked sideways at Potter. “You should speak with him soon.”

“Can’t you give Malfoy the first riddle?” Potter asked impatiently. “Then we can start working on that, and I can see Dumbledore when we can get to him.”

“Get to him.” Severus narrowed his eyes. It was not a question, in one of the most threatening ways possible for something not to be a question.

“They implied that they could get into the Headmaster’s office, but I’d think that the key to the office was locked in this hidden room along with everything else they needed to run the school,” Potter said. “But his portrait is there.”

“That does not prevent me from traveling from frame to frame, my dear boy,” said a voice that plucked Draco’s nerves like harpstrings from behind them.

*

Harry had tried to brace himself ever since he realized that there would be a chance of confronting Dumbledore soon, but he couldn’t have done enough work to prepare himself for _this_.

That voice had begged Harry to stop feeding him poison, and it had spoken an offer of mercy to Malfoy on the Tower, and it had explained so many doubts and plans and mysteries to Harry. During his life and after. 

Hermione had suggested that the vision of Dumbledore Harry had had when he “died” was made-up, the product of his brain’s desperate search for understanding in the tangle of events that was that year. Harry had rejected the suggestion with only a little less violence than he’d brought to her explanation of his sexuality. He chose to believe, and not to question.

But questions sprang to mind now as he watched the man who stood in an empty frame Harry hadn’t even noticed on the wall, so perfectly did it blend in with the color of the stone. Dumbledore leaned forwards and looked at him with yearning eyes.

Or maybe he only imagined they were yearning. Maybe that was what Dumbledore wanted him to see. Harry never had settled how he felt about the man.

Nor did he intend to try now, not with an audience. He locked his eyes on Dumbledore and said, “Good. Now that you’re here, you can explain the first riddle to us, and we can start working on it.”

“My dear boy,” Dumbledore repeated. His eyes _were_ softer, now, but what did that mean? Harry thought. He had resolved to try and stop asking so many questions after the war, to simply enjoy what life and peace had been handed him, but he couldn’t, for so many reasons. The only thing he could do was keep the questions to himself. “You will not allow us even a moment to catch up?”

“I don’t think we two need it,” Harry said, and became aware that Malfoy was staring at him, as if he sensed something wrong. Harry sent him a fierce glare until he looked away—what did it _matter_ if something was wrong with Harry? That had never been Malfoy’s concern before—and then focused back on the portrait. “If you and Malfoy need to say something to each other, though, I’ll leave.”

Dumbledore sighed and exchanged glances with Snape across both their heads. Harry bit his tongue. He was used to that kind of glance now, the kind that said he was a dumb kid and couldn’t control his own life. Ron and Hermione had been looking at each other like that before the end.

_And life would be considerably easier if you stopped thinking about them so much._

“Very well,” Dumbledore said. “What you must do is find the place where both sun and shadow end.”

Harry waited for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder at Snape. “And that’s it?”

“That’s it.” Snape looked for the first time like he was enjoying this. _Well, he probably doesn’t care how much someone else suffers, even someone he claims to “trust,” as long as he can make me upset and impatient,_ Harry thought. Becoming a portrait didn’t seem to have changed Snape’s personality at all.

“Is the place within the grounds of Hogwarts?” Malfoy asked. His voice was calm and brisk, business-like. Harry found himself relaxing without thinking about it. Malfoy was like that. He could make sense of stupid and barbarous situations and find a way to land on his feet within them. It was just the first time that quality had ever benefited Harry along with him.

“We do not know that,” said Snape. “Presumably our former selves did, but they did not leave the knowledge with us.”

“I would suggest, at least,” said Dumbledore, and his eyes twinkled so much that Harry had to look away, “that the place is unlikely to be far from the school. There would be no point in storing the secrets within such a wide range that the person who had to discover them—if such a person had to come along in the first place—could not get back to the school rapidly to defend it from Voldemort.”

Malfoy still flinched at the name, Harry noted. He didn’t bother to look and see if Snape did, because Snape wasn’t the person he’d be working with. “And how will we know if we find the right place?” he asked.

“Ah, that is simple,” Dumbledore said, looking pleased now. “You will find yourselves involved in a fight to the death. Win the fight, and then you will be in possession of the next clue.”

There was little to be said after that, really, Harry thought. Malfoy asked a few more questions, but they weren’t ones that Dumbledore and Snape knew the answers to—though Dumbledore was considerably more polite about saying so than Snape was. In the end, they agreed that Malfoy would be the one to meet the Ministry representative sent in Wimpledink’s place, while Harry went and found rooms in Hogsmeade.

Harry was going out the door when someone touched his arm. He jerked away and whirled around. He didn’t _like_ people touching him there, unless they were doing something to ease his stress. Someone like Malfoy would only add to it.

Malfoy stared at him, one eyebrow already raised. The other rose to join it as Harry watched. “What’s the matter with your, Potter?” he murmured.

“Tense,” Harry said with a shrug, which was no more than the truth. “Jumpy.” He saw Malfoy’s expression and hastily added, “I’ll be able to share the duties of looking for the truth just fine, Malfoy, don’t worry. But this isn’t an easy place for me to be.”

Malfoy actually nodded as if he understood that, and then added, “I wanted to ask what your conflict with Weasley and Granger is. Will they help us, do you think, if approached the right way?”

“You ought to ask Snape that,” Harry said, controlling the first words that wanted to emerge from his mouth. “He’s talked to them more recently than I have.” He turned away again.

“And they told me of your row,” Snape murmured.

Harry couldn’t help the way all the muscles in his back clenched, but he didn’t think that Snape knew anything about the _subject_ of that row. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have hesitated to taunt Harry with it. He kept walking.

“They could be powerful allies,” Malfoy said. “Besides which, I think I would be more easy around them if I knew the source of your disagreement.”

“I’d be easier with _you_ if you knew how to keep your mouth shut,” Harry said, and slammed the door behind him for good measure. Then he tilted his head back and leaned against the stone. His magic churned against his veins; when he looked down, the backs of his hands were glowing with rage, the magic literally heating his blood.

“Here he is, Hermione.”

Harry turned around. He knew who he would see, because he knew whose voice that was. But it somehow made him no calmer. Of course, he didn’t know if anything _could_ make him calmer when his blood was blazing.

Ron and Hermione stood behind him, still wrapped in those plain brown robes. They were even rougher and coarser than Harry had thought they looked at first glance. They made quite a contrast with Malfoy’s prissily fine clothing, or even the robes that Dumbledore and Snape were wearing.

 _Of course, actually caring about their appearance might alienate the Ministry,_ Harry thought, _and we can’t have that._ He straightened his back. “Has Wimpledink’s replacement come?” he asked in a flat voice.

“That isn’t what we came here to talk to you about,” Ron said, in a surprisingly mature and dignified voice. “We don’t care about them. We care about you.”

“Two years ago, we made mistakes,” Hermione said earnestly. “We _all_ made mistakes. We just want to discuss them with you and reconcile, Harry. We missed you.” She gave him a yearning glance that was probably meant to melt him and make him run into their arms. Harry wondered why she thought it would work.

He straightened and folded his arms. “The only mistake I made was in listening to you for as long as I did.”

Hermione shut her eyes. Ron leaned forwards and hissed, “How can you say that? We missed you so much, and you’re acting as though you don’t care at all!”

“I care, but in a way that you don’t want me to,” Harry said. “With anger. You made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome to express my anger in any way.” He looked at Hermione. His blood still rammed against the sides of his veins, but he felt calmer for all that. He had known this confrontation was inevitable from the moment he received the Ministry’s invitation, and this was probably best, to have it out of the way early. “Have you changed your mind about that?”

“You have too much anger,” Hermione said, wiping her tears away. “You _agreed_ with me when we talked about that, Harry, and that’s why you had to go get your—handlers in the first place.”

“Do you still think it’s pathological?” Harry asked.

Hermione sighed. “Harry.”

“Answer the question.” His voice soared on the last word, and a whip manifested in midair, swinging towards Hermione. She leaped back. The whip cracked to the ground next to her and then vanished at Harry’s gesture. He felt the magic heat his lungs now, boiling and snapping and dancing.

 _Fuck._ It had been a long time since it was this bad. He should have made an appointment with Bradley before he left town after all, or perhaps one of the Muggles who wouldn’t care about why he needed what he needed and would just do what he asked, as long as he paid enough.

“Yes,” Hermione said, her tears vanished now, her courage making her bristle like a small dog facing a larger one. “Yes, I do. It wouldn’t be for someone else, but with your history of authority figures telling you what to do? It is. You have to stand on your own two feet and arrange your own life sometime, Harry.”

“I can at least respect you for admitting it,” Harry said, and turned away.

“Where are you going?” Ron called.

“To find lodgings in Hogsmeade. I did tell you that.” Harry was glad he could regulate his voice to be no more than a simple, dull tone.

Ron’s hand clasped his shoulder, and Ron said, “We’re trying to talk to you! You owe us more than this. How many years were we friends? We—”

He snatched his hand back suddenly, howling. Harry had wondered how long it would take. He’d felt the heat creeping up to his neck where Ron held him and made no effort to stop it, because some people didn’t deserve warnings.

He turned and showed his teeth. Ron and Hermione fully froze, staring with wide eyes. Ron even stopped wringing his blistered hand. Harry smiled. He knew that flames flickered between his teeth now and were creeping into his eyes, turning them as red as Voldemort’s.

“Let me go,” he said softly, “if you don’t want me to destroy half the school worse than the Battle of Hogwarts did.”

They stood there, huddled together, looking terrified in the face of his power. Harry was glad that his own yearning to embrace them was such a small part of him, much smaller than the rage that flung itself through him and the thrumming howl of his magic in the back of his skull. Yes, he would have liked to be reconciled to them, in the same way that he would have liked to fly without a broom. It wasn’t going to happen.

“We’re still trying to be there for you,” Hermione said. “I think you’re mentally ill, Harry, and I want to help.”

“My coping methods aren’t good enough for you,” Harry said. He was amazed that he could speak the words, but then decided that he might have spent enough of his magic to lessen some of the rage for a bit. “To you, _those_ are another sign that I’m mentally ill. Do you deny that?”

“No,” Hermione said. “There has to be a way, and you have to face the issues of your personal history in order to get past them, not just bury them and pretend that they didn’t exist.”

Harry hissed at her. It came out like a flare of dragon’s breath. “And there you have it.”

He walked away down the corridor, fighting the urge to make his feet heavier than normal and fill the cracks he would cause in the stone with fire. Yes, it would get rid of some of his magic, but it would also damage Hogwarts, and he still cared about that.

If barely.

He walked out of the front doors, luckily without seeing anyone else, and then shut his eyes and turned towards the Forbidden Forest. When he couldn’t get to someone else for his stress relief, the next best thing was to run, as far and as hard as he could. He could tried flying, but with his magic taking the form of fire, he’d probably burn the broom to ashes.

Considering where he was going, something might block his way. But Harry didn’t mind that, at all. _Let them try.  
_  
He hurtled into the Forest, and the branches swished shut behind him.

*

“It is a little late in your life for you to be doing something so undignified.”

Draco pulled his ear back from the door, where he had unabashedly listened to the conversation between Potter and his friends, and smiled at Severus. “I wanted to know what was going on. Now I do.”

“And what conclusions do you draw?” Severus leaned back in his chair and looked at Draco curiously. They were alone in the room, with Dumbledore having departed his frame when Potter exited.

“That Potter has unattractive anger and very attractive power,” Draco said.

Severus snorted. Draco saw no reason to pay attention to him. He was a portrait, and likely no longer understood the powers of attraction.


	3. Where Sun and Shadow End

_Chapter Three—Where Sun and Shadow End_

Harry finally slowed and stopped. He had run so fast that his legs felt like jellyfish, and his head was spinning and his stomach aching. He leaned against the nearest tree, once he was sure that he no longer crackled with flame that would burn it, and looked around.

The clearing he stood in wasn’t natural; Harry thought something had probably fallen here and burned some of the trees away recently. A lightning strike? The ground was blackened and melted in a few places, and there was a faint, persistent stink of smoke when he got interested enough to smell for it.

Not that he needed to care. He wasn’t going to burn down the Forest, now that the intense run had worn away his anger, and no one would care about his observations or his reasons for being here if he didn’t harm anything.

It had been a great satisfaction, after the war, when Harry realized that he didn’t have to care so much or so intensely. He had tried to reduce his anger with that, thinking about the Ministry’s corruption with indifference. He could never address it, so why try? He could never say why he needed the stress relief that he did or where his anger came from, because neither had any logical cause, so why try?

But it hadn’t worked. He still cared about things like Hogwarts interfering in the Ministry, and he still nourished bitterness against his friends for trying to make him ask questions he wasn’t interested in the answers to.

Harry grimaced and leaned his head back against the trunk again. It would do no good if he ran all that distance and then got upset. He couldn’t stop caring about Ron and Hermione, but he could stop thinking about them for the minute, and go and arrange lodgings in Hogsmeade like he’d said he would.

He turned around, and found a white centaur considering him from so close that Harry didn’t understand how he hadn’t heard his hooves. Harry raised his wand and waited warily. Centaurs could be kind, yes, but not always, and he hadn’t heard anything lately about how they conducted their relations with humans since the war.

“Harry Potter,” the centaur said, in a high voice. “The stars did not predict your coming. Or they did not do so in a way that we could readily understand.”

“No reason they should,” Harry said, with a casual little shrug that he hoped would content the centaur. “I don’t plan to stay here very long.”

He stepped around to the side, but the centaur faced him squarely again and said, “You carry something as dark as an eclipse within you, something that should never find expression.”

Harry gritted his teeth. Now random magical creatures were showing up to tell him how wrong his choices were. He didn’t try to hide the fire that flickered up his side, because the centaur might understand the threat, surrounded by wood, in a way that wizards surrounded by stone and wards didn’t. “I’ll try not to let it. Can I leave now?”

The centaur considered him again, scraping one front hoof back and forth in a slow dance over the leafy ground. Harry stared back some more, and thought about Apparating, but a brief test showed that this part of the Forest still had the same wards on it that surrounded Hogwarts.

“You will find the means to tame it here,” the centaur said at last. “Orion has promised that much. Yes, Orion,” he went on, and Harry thought he was talking mostly to himself, “Orion the fierce hunter, who runs his prey down and does not miss.”

“Good,” Harry said. “That would be good. But I’m leaving now, and I promise that I won’t come here again.” He thought it would be best if he got out of here as soon as possible, not because he feared the centaur’s words of wisdom, but simply because he didn’t want to start a conflagration. 

“Leave,” the centaur said. “You cannot escape from beneath their influence, who look down through dusk and shadow to find us.”

Harry bowed politely and started to go, then hesitated, caught by the similarity of the centaur’s wording to what Dumbledore had said. He turned around. “Can you tell me of the place where both sun and shadow end? We’re trying to find it.”

“There is no such place,” the centaur said. “For does not everything in the world happen beneath the gaze of the sun or the stars? And are not the stars suns in their own right, for worlds we cannot imagine?”

 _Well, that was bloody useless,_ Harry thought crossly, and took his leave. The trail out of the Forest was easy to find, thanks to the blackened footprints he’d left behind, as if he carried his own portable lightning storm with him.

Harry shivered in distaste. He didn’t _like_ being this angry. The methods he resorted to to control the rage were stopgaps. Nothing would have made him happier than getting rid of it forever.

But how could do that? Contrary to what Hermione thought, he’d talked to his share of Healers, Mind-Healers, Potions masters who brewed concoctions that were supposed to control his emotions and damp his magic, and ordinary people who were supposedly good at soothing the anger of others. He’d tried the rigid discipline of the Auror program, meditation rooms that some of the radical young Healers at St. Mungo’s and Muggle books recommended, and different diets.

Nothing helped, except the brief, violent release that he discovered when bound and under orders.

He didn’t even do it that often. Hermione thought she was disgusted by it, but she couldn’t feel that more strongly than Harry himself did.

There was no other answer, though, and so, as he often did for lack of a better option, Harry put the problem out of his mind. He would go to Hogsmeade, get a room at the Three Broomsticks, write a letter to Annie, and then settle down and think seriously about this riddle that Dumbledore had handed him.

Well, them. Having to include Malfoy in the equation was troublesome and alienating, but Harry reluctantly supposed he’d get used to it.

*

Draco walked in a slow circle around the sentient potion’s cauldron. For now, the potion lay quiescent inside it; in fact, it hadn’t moved or made a sound since Draco had brought it to Hogwarts. That could be useful, in that a regular dose of novelty would help him improve his control, or it might be simple fear. Draco already knew that fear would quell the potion for a few hours, but then it would test his control.

When he had added the new ingredient to activate it, a pinfeather from a hummingbird, Severus had leaned forwards in his portrait. “What are you doing?”

“Making a sentient potion.” Draco never took his gaze from the cauldron, because at that point he didn’t know what would happen. The potion might have suddenly decided to make his life interesting. “One that should control the limbs and bodies of people it’s introduced to when I’m finished with it. And animals, of course. Flies and spiders would make excellent spies, if I could adapt the potion to their systems.”

Severus was silent for some time. Then he said, “Did you come up with this project on your own, or did I introduce you to the knowledge?”

“Both,” Draco said, judging that it was safe for the moment to look up at the portrait. “I took hints and clues from your teachings, particularly about the effects of discipline, but most of what I know now I learned from other brewers.”

Severus was silent for so long that Draco thought he’d left the frame. He’d provided himself with a wooden shield by the point that Severus spoke again, as well as a lash of steel wire that he’d Transfigured from a bookmark in one of the obscenely cheerful books along the walls. “My former self did not transfer all his memories to me.”

“I know that,” Draco said, keeping his head turned towards the cauldron and his shield and coil of wire in slight but constant motion. He had felt the urge to freeze the moment Severus spoke those words, but he saw no reason that he should. After all, treating a declaration of vulnerability _as_ a declaration of vulnerability would only cause Severus to shut his mouth. “You told us that already when you told us about the riddles.”

“ _Us_ ,” Severus sneered. “You are truly determined to consider Potter a part of this mission.”

Draco judged it safe to face Severus and nod. “Yes. He is the only ally I have in a tense and confusing situation where the rewards are uncertain. I would like to trust him.”

“Be careful how far you go.” Severus flicked his fingers in a gesture that Draco had seen him use when he was sending dandelion dust into a volatile potion. It was dismissive only on the surface. “I shudder now to think of how my former self trusted him to know what he had to do to defeat the Dark Lord.”

“I couldn’t help being careful, after what I overheard and seeing him burn,” Draco retorted. _And curious. But Severus would disdain the curiosity, so let it remain unspoken for the moment._

The potion lashed out with one green arm, apparently planning on catching him unawares.

Draco spun, blocked it with the wooden shield, touched it with the steel wire, and watched it crumple. He smiled grimly. He had been right in thinking that steel would prove to be a new means of controlling it. 

“I am surprised that you favor working with such dangerous subjects,” Severus murmured. “After what you faced during the last year of the war, do not peace and safety have the strongest attraction for you?”

“I don’t mind peace and safety, in their places,” Draco said, and then began to pull the new “arm” back to the cauldron with the use of the steel. He didn’t want to touch it yet, but he would have to scoop up the small drops that fell to the floor of the dungeon. Leaving a part of it unattached could possibly mean that it would develop new vulnerabilities and new capacities of its own, and grow another body not confined by the cauldron. “But I also don’t mind danger and disruption, in an environment that I ultimately control.”

Severus said nothing. Draco looked at him and found him standing there with his arms folded, head shaking as if he were watching the mistakes of a promising but rather slow apprentice. “No one can control everything he faces. I should think you would have learned that lesson by now.”

“Did Dumbledore teach you that one?” Draco asked.

As he had known would happen, Severus stalked out of the frame. Draco went back to his potion. He liked brewing unpredictable potions, yes, but the real influences that he felt compelled to exclude from his environment were people who insulted him.

He wondered for a moment what it would be like to work with Potter in the room, if he would fling the same insults as Severus or simply try to disrupt the brewing. Most likely he wouldn’t even understand the danger. Severus, portrait and thus lesser reflection of the true man or not, maintained the memories of his training.

_I think Potter would be fascinated, but he would assume that he also understood everything he needed to of brewing, and interfere in undesirable ways._

Then Draco laughed. Why was he considering such a thing? The idea that he and Potter would ever occupy the same room while he was brewing was childish. Perhaps he still dreamed of the things that his child-self had once wanted, of Harry Potter’s notice and attention. Dreams might be put down for a time, but they were rarely forsaken, or Draco would not do such a brisk business in lust drafts and potions meant to restore youthful beauty for a few hours or give someone the ability to fly like a pro Quidditch player.

On the other hand, he might have to brew potions during their quest to solve the riddles and unlock the wards. Perhaps his unconscious, fantasizing mind was wiser than he knew.

He levered the green potion into the cauldron with more thoughtfulness than usual.

*

 _Dear Annie,_ Harry wrote, and then paused, wondering if he had earned the right to call her by her first name. She might not like it, either, since she seemed so much more grown-up than some children he had met.

And he was sure that she didn’t have the same problem he did as a child, when someone calling him by his first name was a pleasant change from the taunts he usually received.

 _Dear Miss Crompton,_ he wrote instead, and then leaned back in his seat, trying to imagine what he could tell her about her chances of coming to a magical school and getting a good education that wouldn’t be a lie.

The room he’d been granted at the Three Broomsticks was pleasant enough. A single window, without any enchantments, showed Harry a view of people passing in the streets of Hogsmeade, and the heavy wooden bed was wide enough for two to sleep in. Harry smiled grimly. That last comfort was rather wasted on him.

And there was a table and chair that he could use to write letters. Harry didn’t need anything else, really, since he had brought his own parchment, ink, and quills with him.

 _I’m at Hogwarts now,_ he wrote when he returned to the letter. _The school is a huge castle, with a lake in front of it. When the first-years come to the school, they ride across the lake on a boat, and they’re met by a gamekeeper named Hagrid. Hagrid’s rather large and he can be frightening, but I think you’ll like him._

Harry paused, frowning suddenly. He hadn’t seen Hagrid since he’d come here. Was he still working as gamekeeper, or had the Ministry dismissed him? One of the arguments he’d had with the Ministry was with the people who wanted to dismiss Hagrid because half-giants were “dangerous.”

Well, he would have to find out later. Just another thing to do, and struggle with, and probably fail at, because the Ministry was determined not to let him have any successes.

Harry gritted his teeth, and wrote on, _Hogwarts teaches you all the subjects you’ll need to control your magic. You’ll learn about the history of the wizarding world, and how to brew potions that heal people and make them fall asleep, and Transfigurations—which is magic that changes things into other things, like changing people into animals—and flying on broomsticks. I didn’t like all of those subjects at Hogwarts, but who knows what you’ll find fascinating?_

He finished the letter with a few more descriptions and recommendations. He would have liked to say something more personal, but he still didn’t know Annie very well yet.

When he sealed the letter, Harry paused before he cast the final spells, fighting his own sudden idea with the side of himself that was more mature. Then he shook his head—his maturity never lasted very long anyway—and cast the charm that would sting anyone other than Annie who tried to open it.

Maybe Annie wasn’t exactly the same as him, but he bet she would still enjoy secrets and the ability to make her own decision about the letter.

When he turned around, intending to trek back to the Owlery and summon his owl, he was startled to see Catherine crouching on the sill. Harry cleared his throat and crossed over to the window to give the letter to her. Catherine accepted it in her beak, but stared at him instead of flying off right away.

“What?” Harry snapped, irritated. Hedwig had never looked at him that way, and she was the only owl he had to compare Catherine to.

Catherine reached out and captured his chin in her talon again, the way she had in the shop. From even closer, she gave him an even more critical stare, and then sharply nipped his ear. Harry jerked back, hand to his ear, swearing, as she soared out the window. That was also a much harder bite than Hedwig had ever given him.

 _Face it,_ Harry told himself gloomily as he went over to clean up his writing supplies. _Not even your owl likes you._

He reckoned he should probably go back to Hogwarts tonight to meet with Malfoy and perhaps the new Ministry representative, but in the meantime, he didn’t have anything better to do than sleep and fantasize about what he could never have.

*

“I’m sure you understand our horror at the way you were treated, Potions master Malfoy. Wimpledink let his understandable impatience with Mr. Potter spill over onto you, and for that, I am _deeply_ sorry.”

Draco took a drink of the wine that the new Ministry representative had served to him the minute he entered her rooms, and smiled at her. The wine was cool and faintly sweet. He wondered who had told her that he liked it that way. If he could have spies in the Ministry, they could certainly have spies on him. “Oh, no, Miss Covington. I wasn’t offended. I always assumed that the Ministry representative would be difficult to work with, no matter who it was.”

Margaret Covington touched her hand to her chest in an expression of dismay so perfectly executed Draco wanted to stand up and applaud. She was an altogether different breed of flunkey from Wimpledink. She was tall and dark-haired, with the signs of pure-blood breeding in her face—although Draco didn’t recognize her name—and she had bright, deep blue eyes and could blush on command. And she never said anything less than soothing and serene and apologetic, though Draco knew she couldn’t mean everything.

 _Potter will be sorry that he missed this,_ Draco thought, and had another sip of the wine.

“I can only grieve that those who dealt with you in the past gave you such expectations.” Covington leaned towards him and lowered her voice. “I hope that I do not?”

“No,” Draco said with complete honesty. She symbolized a different type of challenge that he would have to overcome: the part of the Ministry that would give him soft words and sweet lies and deliver nothing solid.

Covington smiled, took a sip of her own drink—so pale that Draco honestly didn’t know if it was wine or water—and then leaned in further. “I was in Slytherin House myself,” she murmured. “I hope that you don’t think I’m conspiring against the House that sheltered me.”

 _But of course you would,_ Draco thought as he inclined his head, _if it was to your own advantage._ “I must admit that the Ministry’s refusal to deliver a pronouncement on the future of Slytherin has worried me.”

“Such refusals will always be politic as long as we do not have a competent Seer.” Covington spread her hands in what Draco was sure was mock sorrow, but so perfectly rehearsed that it didn’t look that way. “The Ministry can’t yet know whether allowing Slytherin House would turn out to present more disadvantages than advantages.”

“It was allowed for hundreds of years.” Draco knew his smile was sharp, but he had already revealed that he cared about this topic. Speaking further on it was not the same thing as weakness. “Including during wars when the former Dark Lord had been a Slytherin, or the nearest equivalent in his country of origin. Why should it be disallowed now?”

Covington paused in filling her glass and shot him a curious glance. “Surely you don’t think the previous school administrations did all they should have in the interests of safety?”

 _Well-played,_ Draco thought admiringly, and shook his head. “I can’t think that, as the son of a former school governor who often disagreed with a former Headmaster,” he said. “But I’m not convinced that the exclusion of Slytherin House represents a safety issue.”

“What would it represent, then?” Covington settled back in her chair, seeming entirely prepared to discuss this for as long as he needed to be persuaded.

“An issue of politics,” Draco said. “As you admitted yourself.”

Covington laughed. “I could accuse you of a pun, but I will treat your concern seriously instead.” Draco nodded. He had expected a tactic like that, one aimed at reducing his self-confidence, and it might have worked if he was less settled within himself and less in tune with Severus’s lessons. “The Ministry is much more worried about Dark wizards than we used to be. We have expanded the Auror program and searched more extensively for new trainees, as well as giving extra lessons on the matter to the rest of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

“Despite the exclusion of one _prominent_ Auror from your Department,” Draco said, “I believe you.”

“Did you ever hear why Potter had been sacked?” Covington was utterly unruffled. “For opposing the Ministry’s plans for Hogwarts. The issue of our children’s education is more important to us than the placement of an arrogant grandstander, war hero though he may be.”

Draco nodded again. He didn’t think that was Covington’s own opinion, necessarily, but it was useful to know the Ministry party line.

“It seems useful, necessary, and convenient to eliminate a House that often produced Dark wizards,” Covington continued. “No, not everyone who comes out of the House is Dark, but you can’t deny that there were more of them than there should have been. Some of my yearmates had no _taste._ ” She shuddered delicately.

“What would happen, under this new plan, if a Dark wizard turned up in Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Gryffindor?” Draco asked softly. “Would you abolish them as well?”

“The reason that Slytherin produced Dark wizards is not due particularly to the children being selected,” Covington said, “or its location in the dungeons, or even the Dark wizards who sometimes Headed it.”

“Such as?” Draco was prepared to defend Severus if she included him.

“Oh, I’m sure you can think of many,” Covington said, once again smoothly dodging and apparently paying a compliment to his intelligence. “But as I was saying. The main reason for the House producing Dark wizards is the philosophy of its founder. Can you imagine preferring pure-bloods over Muggleborns in this day and age?”

 _Snake,_ Draco thought. _An appropriate symbol for her. I can’t tell whether she ever held beliefs based on blood, and that’s the point. She’ll slither into any available hole and adapt her coloring to the people around her. She has no core beliefs except in her own advancement._

“Then simply encourage Muggleborn students as well as pure-bloods to join the ranks,” Draco said, with a careless shrug. “Change the reputation of the House in the school that ensured students of our kind often became self-segregating. When they find it less fearsome, I don’t think Muggleborn students will be so resistant to being Sorted there.”

“And when they find out that their House’s founder specifically raised and trained a basilisk to attack people like them?” Covington gave him a direct glance. “What would your response to their fearful questions be?”

“That Slytherin didn’t embody all the virtues or faults of the House, and his students don’t have to, either,” Draco said. “Simple enough. Not all Gryffindors, excluding perhaps Potter, are true heirs of Godric Gryffindor, either.”

“Simple,” Covington echoed. “When the symbol, the name, the ideal that the children are exhorted to live up to, the philosophy of many students within it—including the older students of six different years that the Sorted Muggleborns will have to live with—tell them otherwise. Yes, simple indeed.”

When Draco got up to leave, he still hadn’t managed to wrangle a straight answer out of Covington, or win the argument, though her replies did indicate that the Ministry strongly intended to close Slytherin. Draco shook his head as he paced through the corridors towards the dungeons. The Ministry had made a mistake, perhaps simply out of oversight, with Wimpledink, but now they were going to be harder opponents than he’d thought.

“Psst! Malfoy.”

Draco turned his head slowly, hoping to express his extreme indignation that someone would couple his last name with such a childish and silly outburst as “Psst!” Then he saw the source of the voice and realized that it wouldn’t matter.

“Weasley,” he said. “What do you want?”

Weasley waved frantically at him to be quiet. Draco raised his eyebrows and strolled nearer. Weasley was standing in a side corridor, checking up and down for other people in a way that showed he hadn’t conspired very often. Draco wondered where his wife was. She would have done infinitely better.

“Listen,” Weasley said in a hurried whisper, “I think we could stop the Ministry from taking over the school, or at least having it all their own way, if we could cooperate.”

Draco raised an eyebrow and said nothing at all. He wasn’t about to share the riddle that Severus and Dumbledore had entrusted to him and Potter, and he didn’t think that Potter would, either.

“You need to speak to Harry,” Weasley said. He was sweating, and spent a moment staring at a currently blank portrait frame as if he assumed that the painting was hiding behind it to listen to their conversation. “He won’t listen to us. All it’ll take is a few compromises, and we can have back the Hogwarts that we know and love.”

“What kind of compromises?” Draco asked calmly. It cost him nothing to ask.

“Well—more wards, of course.” Weasley grimaced as though he was swallowing a Gobstone. “The Ministry insists. They want a ban on Quidditch right now, too, but that won’t hold against the students’ clamor for it. And Slytherin House would have to be shut down, but the students who would otherwise be Sorted there can ask for another House. Don’t look at me like that,” he added defensively, though Draco didn’t think he was “looking like” anything in particular. “I know it’s possible. Harry did it.”

Draco blinked, and oddly enough, his first thought was, _There goes my point against Covington about Potter’s perfect Gryffindor nature. If only she knew._ “What House?” he asked.

Weasley, stopped in mid-flight, blinked foolishly again as if he didn’t know how to begin. “What?”

“Which House was Potter almost Sorted into?” Draco asked, more quietly than before.

“Look, it doesn’t matter.” Weasley waved a hand. “I shouldn’t have said that. The _point_ is that it only means a few changes. The Ministry can appoint a Headmaster, sure, but the school won’t work with them if they’re unsuitable—the portraits and the wards and the stones themselves, I mean. So it’ll be only a few years before we get a new Headmaster. These are all _workable_. But Harry refuses to compromise. He always did,” Weasley added, half to himself. “Will you persuade him? I know you want to see Hogwarts open again.”

“Tell me one thing,” Draco said. “And I’ll speak to him.”

“What House he was Sorted into?” Weasley asked. “Easy enough. It was—”

“No. What you rowed about badly enough that he won’t speak to you now.”

Weasley stiffened as though someone had filled his arms with needles. He stared at Draco for long moments, while Draco waited and the silence grew thicker. Draco did listen, to make sure that no one else was nearing them or lurking behind Weasley, since he seemed so upset about that, but he heard nothing.

 _I wonder if Granger knows he’s here?_ Then Draco dismissed what could have been an interesting possibility. _Of course she does. One of them would never act without the other._

“I don’t owe you that,” Weasley finally said, measuring the words as though he assumed that would make them easier to speak. “I owe you _nothing_. But I offered the information about what House Harry was going to be Sorted into. Isn’t that enough?”

“You’re trying to make bargains by trading on your friends’—excuse me, former friends’—secrets,” Draco said. “I don’t think you get to take the moral high ground.”

He paused courteously, but Weasley had nothing to say. Draco nodded and continued his journey, sighing in relief when he could close the door of Severus’s rooms behind him.

“Did you learn anything of interest?” Severus was bending over the cauldron in his portrait, frowning. Draco watched the cloud of white smoke that surrounded him and decided that he had no reason to intervene in the brewing process, yet. The smoke had a color and consistency that would have worried Draco, but he didn’t know exactly what Severus was trying to make.

“The Ministry representative is a Slytherin who feels no loyalty to the traditions of the House,” Draco said, and sat down in a chair close to the fire. He felt pleasantly amused, but also restless. Perhaps Covington’s wine had affected him more than he’d thought. “And Weasley stopped me on the way back and wanted me to talk Potter into reconciling with him and Granger.”

Severus stared. “He thought _you_ would do that?”

Draco laughed. “People do persist in thinking that I have some inner sense of decency. Why, I can’t imagine.”

Severus leaned nearer, hands braced on the rim of the cauldron. “I remember what you did during the war, Draco. I know what you refrained from doing.”

“That’s the point, though,” Draco said softly, holding his eyes without effort. He had begun to lose his awe of Severus-the-man by spending a few hours around Severus-as-portrait, and his guilt for not coming sooner. He couldn’t make up for his mistakes by cowering before a portrait. Severus himself was gone, and the part of him left behind an inferior reflection. “I _refrained_ from doing some things. That isn’t the same thing as actively helping the cause that you fought for.”

After a few seconds, Severus nodded and once again retreated to the side of the cauldron. “Did Weasley offer you any enticement to do as he asked?” he murmured in a neutral tone, sounding more preoccupied with his potion than anything else.

“What House Potter was supposed to be Sorted into, before he chose Gryffindor,” Draco said. “He mentioned it in the context of a rant to show that children who might be Sorted into Slytherin after the school reopened could _always_ choose another House, and then he regretted the mention and tried to reverse himself, and then he tried to use it as a bargaining chip. I can understand why Potter turned his back on that mass of inconsistent impulses and incoherent ideas.”

“That is an easy answer,” Severus said. He picked up something green and soft and plunged it into the potion, releasing an enormous cloud of steam. Draco, watching him, wondered idly where he got his ingredients. Perhaps there were portraits that showed the Forbidden Forest and other points of possible collection. “Albus told me once, when he was trying to convince me to ‘bond’ with Potter.” He rolled his eyes. “Supposedly, the Hat wanted him for Slytherin.”

Draco blinked. “I can’t see—” he began, and then stopped, thinking of the brutal words that Potter had spoken to his friends today and the anger that powered his magic. “I _can_ see it,” he decided. “Slytherins don’t always have to be subtle.”

“I doubt the information matters,” Severus said, and with a fluid shrug, he deposited one more green and soft object in the potion. The white steam vanished. Draco smiled. He should have remembered that the portrait-painting process would probably not have taken away Severus’s skill as a brewer. “Potter chose Gryffindor. He is the product of that choice, not a non-existent one where he acceded to the Hat’s suggestion.”

“Yes, perhaps,” Draco said, and then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, mind turning, for lack of other material, to the riddle that Severus and Dumbledore had given them.

_Where sun and shadow end._

It could refer to a cave, perhaps, but Draco didn’t know any caves on the grounds of Hogwarts—and he was going to assume that this place was close to Hogwarts until he had some solid evidence otherwise. It could also refer to the dungeons, but since those were enclosed within the body of the school, Draco didn’t see the point of singling them out specifically. And besides, there were places in the dungeons, such as these altered rooms, that brought in sunlight through the enchanted windows.

Or were Dumbledore and Severus thinking only of the school as it had looked in their time, and discounting any other changes?

Draco grimaced and rubbed his head. He wished that there was some way to be sure of what places they could safely eliminate, but there wasn’t. He would have to go ahead and hope that Potter was coming up with better ideas.

His immediate temptation was to snort to himself and mock the idea, but then he reconsidered the information Severus had given him, and Weasley, and what he had heard, and temperately decided that he wouldn’t make any judgments on Potter’s intelligence until he had to.

Among other things, that gave him more hope that they might actually manage to solve the riddles.

*

Harry had woke late enough to miss any plausible meeting, so he ate alone in his rooms, turning the riddle over in his mind. It seemed odd to him that Dumbledore and Snape would have talked about a place where sun and shadow _ended,_ instead of where they never came. That suggested sunlight could get into the place, but not go all the way.

_What would prevent it? Another barrier of darkness? A human-created barrier? And why did they specify shadow? And why sunlight? Why not say other kinds of light, like lamps?_

Harry licked a smear of potato from his lip and decided that he couldn’t yet decide for certain what the riddle meant. What he _could_ do was make a list of the places around Hogwarts that the riddle might mean. He pushed his empty plate aside and picked up the ink and parchment again.

There was the cave that Sirius had hidden in during his fourth year; that might count, if you thought about a place where the sunlight stopped coming in because it faded away into the darkness. And maybe the Astronomy Tower, because of the way the stairway curved and suddenly left you inside the stone, but Harry couldn’t believe that anyone going up and down the stairs wouldn’t have noticed it before this. After all, Dumbledore had said they would be in a fight to the death when they found the secret. 

_In fact,_ Harry thought as he scratched out the Tower on his list, _that would apply to any place within Hogwarts. I can’t imagine the Ministry hasn’t entered most of the places in it, looking for the key that will let them unlock the Sorting Hat and the rest of those things._

There might be possibilities in those places that no one had entered, though. Harry wrote down the Room of Requirement and circled it.

There was also the Forbidden Forest. Harry grimaced at the thought of wandering through the whole of it until they located the place. He didn’t think Dumbledore and Snape would require them to do that, but considering how paranoid they had been with the rest of the precautions, it might be possible.

Where else? Harry leaned back, tapping his quill against his teeth, and had to admit that he couldn’t think of many more likely places. Yes, you could shut sunlight off by closing a door, but the shadows would still be there if there was any light source anywhere in the space. And the sunlight could come back the minute you opened the door again. That was _stopping_ it, not _ending_ it.

Unless maybe the difference between the words “stop” and “end” wasn’t important.

Harry blew out his breath and shook his head. He was getting angry again, because he was frustrated, and that was the last thing he needed right now. He shoved the parchment away from him, cast defensive charms around the table, the chair, and the bed, and then set about doing what he could to relieve his own frustration.

His magic writhed and danced as he cast the spells, creating chains as thick as his thumb and made of shining blue-black steel. Harry grimaced and wound them around his wrists. They wouldn’t do the job, of course. His magic could break anything formed of his magic. He couldn’t be held back as he really needed to be.

But this was still the best solution. He could hardly go for another run through the Forbidden Forest right now. He attached the chains to the outside of the defensive charms on the bed and then threw his wand from him.

Immediately, he felt anxiety stirring in his muscles, the memory of how Voldemort had bound him in the graveyard rushing to the forefront of his mind. Harry panted, sweat on his forehead and his collarbone and under his arms. He would have liked something to rest his forehead against, and Bradley usually provided it, but he wouldn’t get it here. This was a compromise, one that wouldn’t last long.

But while it lasted, it might help him and remove some of the coiling, crackling tension that was the real problem. 

He lunged forwards against the chains. They creaked, but held. Harry lunged again, then forced himself backwards and thrashed from side to side, concentrating on trying to find the weak points among the thick links or in the cuffs that covered his arms.

There was none—at least yet. And Harry felt that sensation he didn’t know how to define except as a burst of freedom pass through him, white behind his eyes, cool and still when it reached his heart, and for a few seconds he was calm.

He had to fight the bonds, but he also needed them. In fact, he needed them to be strong enough that he couldn’t break free. Once bound, once past the first moments when instinct and fear made him struggle, then it was as if the bonds of his anger shattered to compensate.

Bradley hadn’t liked doing this, although he was willing to accommodate Harry in some other things and Harry had done “worse” for him in the past. The bonds should always be weak enough to snap with a single pull, was his view. In fact, he preferred string to anything else. It was the symbolic importance of the binding that he liked.

But Harry needed chains.

The moment of relaxation was passing. Harry could remember the ropes that Voldemort had used to tie him down, the rough hemp rubbing against his skin, how he hadn’t been able to move but had struggled desperately to get away. Past bled into present, and he threw his weight against the chains again.

This time, they parted. Either the magic he’d used in the creation of them or the magic that they’d been attached to simply wasn’t strong enough. Harry sprawled on the floor in the midst of the rapidly dissipating links and took a few quick breaths, preparing a lie in case anyone from the Three Broomsticks should come up to see what the noise was about.

Sometimes he thought these brief moments of respite were actually worse than simply suppressing and controlling his anger until he could find someone else to do it for him. They made him remember and crave what he couldn’t have, and desire would join the anger, resulting in a still more unstable combination.

At other times, he had tried buying his own chains, but his magic would simply undo those just when he was falling into true peace, because it interpreted his giving up as a sign that he was surrendering and had to have help.

Harry rocked back on his heels and shook his head. He didn’t think he would ever find somebody who understood why he wanted to be tied up and ordered about, but also why he had to fight it in the beginning. He _knew_ there were people who could lie down on the floor and become submissive as easily as they could go to sleep. But he wasn’t one of them.

Well. He had got this far without a person who permanently understood him. In fact, permanent understanding was probably an illusion anyway. Look at how his “unbreakable” friendship with Ron and Hermione had turned out.

Sour again, but deciding that was better than angry, Harry went back to studying the list of likely places the riddle could be referring to.

*

 

“ _This?_ You call _this_ a likely candidate?”

Potter nodded and didn’t turn around, which somewhat disappointed Draco. He would have thought his question deserving of at least some of the anger Potter had shown in front of Weasley and Granger. 

But Potter seemed more self-contained today in general. He had met Draco in front of the school at nine, listened to his tale of the meeting with Covington without a flicker of his eyebrows, nodded, and then led the way to the cave he had said might be the place where sun and shadow ended.

“I don’t call it a likely candidate.” Potter’s voice was muffled as he drove further into the small cave—if you could call it a cave. Draco would have called it a scratch in the side of a hill. “I call it a place we have to investigate, just in case. After all, both sun and shadow end here when the sunlight runs out.”

“But the riddle spoke as though sun and shadow were separate,” Draco said, lounging against the entrance of the cave with his arms folded. He was more than willing to let Potter be the dirty one. “Not both ending because one ends.”

“How do we know that?’ Potter looked over his shoulder, tossing dust out of his hair. For some reason, Draco’s mouth went dry, and he would have frowned in confusion had he been by himself. He usually preferred scrupulously clean partners. He had to put this eccentricity aside in his brain for his own contemplation, later. “Remember, these are portraits, and we didn’t know the originals so well that we can say what they intended with such a simple riddle.”

“I knew Severus that well,” Draco said simply, concealing his irritation that Potter had been the one to remind him about the limitations of portraits instead of the other way around. “I’m sure that’s what it means.”

“How did you come to know him?” Potter sat back against the wall of the cave and cast a spell that created a ball of glowing pink light which ventured further in. Draco opened his mouth to ask what that was for, and then closed it again. Of course. Potter wanted to see if he could trigger the traps that Dumbledore and Severus had spoken of.

“When we were running from the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters,” Draco said. “He spoke of many different things, and while he never mentioned the riddles or the wards, I got a good glimpse of how his mind worked.”

Potter’s mouth curved to the side in an ugly sneer. “What, Malfoy, you’re still afraid of saying _Voldemort_?”

Draco let the words sail past his ear, and then responded calmly, “I respect the power of his name, yes.”

“Why?” Potter scrambled to his feet, hands planted against the cave wall as if he would hurl himself off it in Draco’s direction. Draco wondered whether there was something special behind this, or whether Potter had simply gone without his daily dose of anger and needed it now. “He isn’t someone you need to _respect_.”

“It’s not about him,” Draco said. “It’s about what that name meant to me for two years, the absolute dread it stirred up in me, the fear that he would kill my parents. I won’t name him for the same reason that you don’t usually talk about the subjects of your nightmares.”

Potter’s jaw went slack while he stared at Draco. Draco couldn’t help thinking it was more attractive clenched.

Then Potter said, “Yeah. I understand that,” and turned away, throwing a few more balls of light into the cave’s interior.

Draco eyed his back in silence, let him waste his time a little more, and then said, “So. Why did you refuse to be Sorted into Slytherin?”

Potter went still and tilted his head as if listening to a far-off call. Then he said, “I should have known one of them would betray me further.”

Draco paused, then pressed on. “I asked you a question.”

“You hardly need to ask, do you?” Potter said, and then waved his wand. A flare of yellow light illuminated the cave to the furthest corner, and another incantation should have made any wards present glow. Nothing happened. Draco nodded. He had argued from the beginning that this cave couldn’t be the place. “You were there. You’d taunted the first person who’d ever been friendly to me, and you’d acted as though you were better, superior. And Hagrid told me about Voldemort. Of course I wasn’t going to go into your House, and _his_.”

Draco tapped his fingers against his arm. He had expected some more complex motivation than a childish grudge, or a childish fear.

Then he wanted to laugh. _Severus would say that you’ve been influenced too much by knowledge of his House affiliation. It doesn’t matter that he could have Sorted Slytherin. He didn’t actually become one._

“Ah,” Draco said. “And what did you argue with your friends about?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Potter said in a friendly voice. “It’s not here. Why don’t we try the Room of Requirement?”

*

Harry couldn’t understand the way Malfoy was leaning on him.

Well, not literally _on_ him. That would have been stupid. Harry would have shrugged, or made his skin hot with his magic, and Malfoy would have fallen to the ground or howled the way Ron had when Harry burned his hand the other day, and that would have been the end of it.

But he was asking him questions and then studying him as if Harry was one of the experimental potions he had talked about brewing. Whether he got an answer or not, he had a habit of nodding solemnly. Harry had the impression that he was absorbing information Harry gave him through his silences, his eyes, the movement of his hands. He didn’t actually _need_ to speak for Malfoy to know him.

And he hadn’t stopped when they left the cave—where Harry had imagined that his questions were the result of boredom—and moved to the Room of Requirement. Harry was currently prowling up and down before the door, trying to imagine the kind of place that Snape and Dumbledore might have hidden the damn key. Malfoy leaned against the wall behind him and asked his infuriating questions.

“Do you ever regret asking the Hat not to put you in Slytherin?”

“How can I, when it would have meant more contact with you?” Harry closed his eyes and tried as hard as he could to remember all the random remarks Dumbledore had made to him over the years, especially during his sixth year. On the other hand, he also had to keep in mind that the riddle demanded a place where sun and shadow ended.

“That’s not a compelling reason,” Malfoy said, as if he were a philosopher instead of a Potions master. “You couldn’t know at the time what more contact with me might have meant. You might have ended up a brilliant researcher. You could have defeated the Dark Lord more easily by being involved with the children of his inner circle.”

“Or I could have been corrupted by you, and by now we’d all be serving him,” Harry said, and fixed an image in his mind. It was based on the first thing Dumbledore had ever said to him about the Room, so he hoped that it might have more usefulness than some of the other random projections. He started stalking up and down the corridor. _One._

“Which could have its usefulness,” Malfoy said in the same smooth, unruffled tone.

“Yes,” Harry agreed. “For one thing, you might have been exiled to the other side of the world to marry a pure-blood bride in India or something. And we wouldn’t have to be here solving stupid riddles.” _Two._

Malfoy didn’t speak again, though Harry could feel that burning stare on the back of his head. He ignored it. _Three._

The door appeared, a tiny, low thing with an arched frame and a brass handle. Harry shook his head—he couldn’t guess what the room would look like from the outside only based on the door—and grabbed the handle. A tingling bolt of energy zipped up his arm, which made him hope that there was considerable magic behind the wood.

He opened it.

The room inside was dim, with sunlight and shadow both filtering through the windows and then halting precisely short of the center of the chamber. Harry heard a menacing click and rustle there, and licked his lips. Maybe this was the fight to the death that Dumbledore and Snape had been talking about. He drew his wand and started to move forwards.

Malfoy grabbed his arm, squeezing down. Harry gasped and stood still, his eyes half-shutting despite himself. The power behind his hand said that Malfoy didn’t care how much he hurt Harry, or thought he could take it.

It had been so long since Harry experienced those things at the hands of someone he didn’t pay. In fact, right now he couldn’t remember if he’d _ever_ experienced them just like that. His knees weakened and a dark purple cloak seemed to cross over his vision. He swayed and tried to fall.

“Hold _still_ , Potter,” Malfoy snarled in his ear, and Harry was more than happy to obey. “What are those things? Where did you bring us?”

Harry dragged in a shivering breath and managed, from a great distance, to remind himself that he couldn’t do this, couldn’t give in and treat Malfoy like someone who had agreed to help him. Malfoy might have done this accidentally, but he wasn’t even as knowledgeable as Bradley, who had never understood why Harry required this. Harry had to be normal, had to snatch the moment of relief and not expect any more of it.

He’d had a lot of practice at that, fortunately. So his voice was calm when he said, “Dumbledore mentioned the Room of Requirement once, when he first talked about it, as a place where he’d found a lot of chamber pots when he really needed them.”

Malfoy was silent. Harry knew it was the silence of disbelief, and that helped him to move a bit further away from the private meaning of the hand on his arm and the snarled orders in his ear. He broke free and listened. There was a menacing gurgle of water from the center of the room, and a noise like a jug slowly tipping over.

“So…” Malfoy said.

“So I brought us to a room that combined that memory and the answer to the riddle.” Harry took a step forwards and turned his head. “It’s as likely a hiding place as any other. Are you coming?”

“No,” Malfoy said flatly. “It can’t be here. There’s no way that anyone could be expected to hit on the right combination of needs, and the riddles are supposed to be _difficult_ to solve, not impossible.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Do you have any better idea right now? One that doesn’t involve walking through the Forbidden Forest for months and hoping to bump into the key? I don’t know about you, but I do have a _life_ to get back to.” He moved another step forwards. The gurgling noise repeated.

Malfoy clamped his hand down so hard that Harry knew there would be bruises left. That triggered his other set of reflexes, to fight, and he twisted his arm, forcing Malfoy to let go. “What are those things?”

Harry started to answer, but one of the “things” flailed into the light and showed well enough what it was.

It had a squat, brass body and a mouth in the middle of it accented with long pointed teeth and an equally long and equally pointed tongue. It stuck the tongue out at them, wriggled it, and then launched itself into the air.

Harry swung his wand and cast a curse that sliced through the body of the thing. It fell at his feet, squirming, dying, tongue cut by the teeth. Both faded away when it “died” and left an ordinary object lying there.

“Predatory chamber pots,” Malfoy said. “Bloody _predatory chamber pots._ ”

Two more of them flew through the air, and Harry swirled his wand and created a rope of fire that tugged them into each other and boiled them both into a sticky mass of metal. As it crashed to the floor, Malfoy propelled Harry backwards and slammed the door. They heard several angry thumps against the door before it vanished.

“That might have been our chance, you fucker,” Harry said when he could get his breath. It was a while since he had fought for his life, though dealing with his magic and retaining his Auror training had helped. He moved further away from Malfoy, conscious of what might happen if he stayed close, and flicked sweat from his forehead.

“It wasn’t,” Malfoy said flatly. “Dumbledore was strange, yes, and might expect people to guess what he meant based on nothing, but Severus was logical and would have tempered his oddities. The ‘where sun and shadow end’ has to mean something else.”

“Fine.” Harry turned away and started pacing the corridor so that he wouldn’t have to look at Malfoy. “What would you suggest? What can block both sunlight and shadow? Walls, stone, something that eats both?”

“Or a place where they naturally run out.” Malfoy had retreated to his cool tone again. “I told you, I think the use of the phrase ‘end’ rather than ‘stop’ significant.”

“If it was a place where they naturally ran out, then I’d think the riddle would have used ‘stop,’” Harry pointed out, and had the rare pleasure of seeing Malfoy look flustered.

“What suggestions do you have, then?” Malfoy folded his arms and tilted his head forwards as though granting Harry the nod that began a duel.

Harry smiled back. He had reason to know that his smiles were unnerving, but to his disappointment, Malfoy did nothing more than shake his head as if slightly irritated. “I suggest that we think about what can _end_ light,” Harry said. “Darkness, obviously. Night. But what about a place?”

“A spell that imitates the effects of darkness or night,” Malfoy said, a bit of the ice melting from his features as he became interested in the conversation. Harry wondered for a moment if that was all it would have taken when they were boys to become friends with him, and then snorted. Malfoy had been _interested_ in distinctly different things at that point. “Or a potion. Or a curse.”

Harry bit his tongue on the temptation to say that a spell and a curse were basically the same thing in this scenario. Malfoy was trying to help, although he was largely incompetent at cooperating with anyone. “Or something within the place itself, some quality that _acts_ like a spell or a potion. Maybe somewhere tilted, with a line of earth or trees that naturally interrupts it, like the horizon interrupting sunset?” Then Harry paused and frowned. “But a place like that would cast a long shadow.”

“Yes,” Malfoy said, with a shallow nod, and began to pace back and forth, every line of his body bent in ferocious thought. “But the thought of a place that stops light by its nature is a good one.”

Harry closed his eyes. It felt as though the answer ought to be obvious, especially if they could restrict themselves to looking inside Hogwarts’s grounds, but—

Then he opened his eyes and smiled. 

Malfoy noticed the smile, somehow, though as far as Harry could tell, his head had been turned away at the time. He whipped around and went still, eyes blazing as though he could will Harry to tell him what he’d just thought of.

Harry felt a sharp tingle streak through his legs, as though someone had hit him in the back of his knees. Malfoy couldn’t compel him with a gaze, no, but with _words—_

Then Harry put aside that thought as too ludicrous to consider, and said softly, “The lake.”

*

Draco swallowed the last of the potion that he’d brewed that morning and held the next vial out to Potter. Potter, standing on the shore and staring at the water as if hypnotized, didn’t notice. Draco had to nudge him sharply in the ribs to get him to turn around.

Potter leaped and whirled as he did so, coming down on his feet like a startled cat. His eyes shone with a dim reflection of the coruscating green flame that surrounded his body as it had on the first day they were here. Draco eyed it in appreciation and held out the vial, wondering if he would feel heat as his hand approached the fire.

To his disappointment, the fire vanished before he could touch it. Potter inclined his head, took the potion, and examined it for a moment, murmuring a charm, before he drank. Testing for the presence of poison, Draco assumed. 

“This will help us breathe under the water?” Potter asked when he finished. He acted as if he would toss the glass vial aside, but Draco rescued it with a quick motion of his arm. Potter returned his glare with interest. It was as if the brief moment of calm and joining thoughts yesterday when they had worked out the solution to the riddle had never happened.

Oddly, Draco found himself wanting to hold both that brief space of time and Potter’s gaze. The air between them felt charged the way it did when lightning was about to strike. Potter’s breathing quickened, and the flames appeared on his shoulders again. Draco took a step forwards, not sure what would happen, but willing to take the risk. He took a greater chance every time he approached his sentient potion, after all.

Then Potter abruptly snapped his head to the side, breaking the connection, and said, “Well?”

Draco sighed. The circumstances would have been easier without the dancing, leaping connection he and Potter shared, as they would have been easier without the slippery Covington. She had invited him to dinner again last night and offered him all sorts of vague promises and threats that it would be child’s play for the Ministry to deny later. 

“Yes, it will,” he said. “It’s more reliable than gillyweed, and will leave us able to talk and fight.”

Potter nodded, then leaped into the water as though the surface had taunted him. Draco frowned and followed, after casting one more spell on himself that would keep his robes dry. It was Potter’s fault if he got his clothing wet.

When Draco was beneath the surface, he had to concentrate and press down on his chest to force his lungs to release their trapped air. Then water rushed in his mouth instead, an unpleasant sensation he had never cared for. He grew used to it after a few breaths and looked around for Potter.

Potter had a flushed face, as if he had fought his own battle over the sensation of water-breathing and barely conquered. He had also shed his robes and was folding them into a tight packet that he tossed back onto the shore. Beneath, he wore only a light pair of trousers that presumably wouldn’t interfere with his swimming.

Draco eyed him in appreciation, at least when Potter had his head turned away and couldn’t notice. Potter’s chest was covered with a snaking tracery of scars that mostly seemed to spiral down from his shoulders and collect in the center of his chest. They intrigued Draco. He would have recognized the marks of most cutting spells and whips, and these resembled none of them. If he had to hazard a guess, he would have said they were most similar to the marks of acid on a test piece of parchment.

“Let’s go,” Potter said gruffly, facing Draco again. He caught his eye only briefly, frowned at whatever he saw there, and then dived. Draco swam close behind him, casting _Lumos_ on his wand as they left both light and shadow behind.

The water closed in, constant pressure, the feeling of blankets entangled about one’s limbs. Draco drew his breath in slowly and let it out as slowly. He could swim well, at his father’s insistence, but he had never before gone this deep.

Potter, the git, seemed utterly at home, and it took Draco long moments to remember that he had been here before, when he had to rescue Weasley from the lake in their fourth year.

Determined to show that he could swim as well as Potter could, Draco drew up beside him. The only thing he received for his trouble was a single impatient glance. Potter started to open his mouth. Draco assumed it was to scold, and braced himself for insults.

The trap struck then.

The water around them glittered, and Draco turned his head to pursue the glittering. The whole point of the riddle was supposed to be that there was no light down this far, after all. But it continued to move and gleam, and then he saw the lake itself form into enormous, heaving creatures, with coil after liquid coil.

Draco swore and reached for his wand, but one loop of body had already reached out and bound his arms to his sides. He flexed his fingers once, then clenched his right hand down so that he wouldn’t drop his wand into the depths of the lake. With one weapon rendered useless, he would simply have to try others. His left hand was close to a pocket. He scrabbled at it with his fingers, managing to pry it open.

Movement again caught his eye, and Draco looked up.

Potter was dancing in the water, moving as if in a play, opposite an enormous silvery-blue serpent made of water. The serpent swayed its head back and forth, eyes focused only on Potter. Draco stared. He knew Potter was creating a distraction, but he wasn’t sure how he was doing it.

Then Draco’s ears caught up with his brain. The potion he had chosen was one that would allow him and Potter to speak beneath the water so that their spells and warnings wouldn’t turn into meaningless bubbles, but apparently it was also good for other things.

Such as conveying the sibilant words of Parseltongue.

Draco floated in the motionless coils of the beast holding him, feeling as trapped and drugged as it apparently was, and watched.

*

Harry had felt a smile break across his face when he saw the trap. Yes, the snakes were formidable opponents and there was no reason to assume that he would be able to communicate with them as he could with normal snakes, or control them, but he had smiled anyway.

This was a place that he could _use_ his magic, and thus use up some of the power racing and battering against the limits of his body.

“ _I am master here,”_ he told the serpent that had lashed towards him, and it had hesitated long enough that he could continue. “ _Do you doubt it? Could the ones who made you and set you here speak to you as I can? Could they make their wills known in your own tongue? Bow down to me. It is what you wish to do.”_

The snake whipped its tail in a circle, then slowly edged towards him, head dipping up and down as though it was examining his hands for signs of food. Harry laughed and kept up the stream of Parseltongue, knowing that he couldn’t expect to control a magical creature right away with a command so simple.

“ _Has no one ever come to see you since they set you here? Have they not enchanted you, charmed you, thanked you for your service?”_ He backed up in the water, floating down with small waves of his hands, not daring to take his eyes off the serpent in case it suddenly changed direction. He wondered where Malfoy was, but had no time to contemplate. This was his task, ensuring the snakes didn’t attack them, and Malfoy would have to handle himself for the moment.

The serpent never responded, but continued to dance opposite him, slowly settling into a regular pattern. Harry propelled himself sideways, then down, then up again, letting the movement of the water around him join in the pattern. The words, too, resumed their own pattern, so soft and regular that Harry wondered if anyone hearing the Parseltongue from the outside could isolate the individual words.

“ _Yes, it’s better when you have someone to speak to you. Someone who cares for you as a creature, someone who will see you as more than a guard. Someone to be your master and cradle you in words that hiss. Yes, it’s better when you have someone to speak to you…”_

Harry repeated himself until he knew his throat would be sore if he was speaking English, and twisted to the side slowly. He spotted Malfoy, caught in the coils of another serpent. Like the first one, it was bobbing its head in time to Harry’s words, watching him.

Harry licked his lips. He couldn’t keep this up forever, and so far the snakes hadn’t shown any intent to attack. He would just have to hope that his control was strong enough over them for what he needed to do next.

“ _Down. Leave us._ ”

The snakes paused, their heads slowly curving to the side and then staying poised. The one in front of Harry swam closer to him, and he saw the coils forming again, glistening like Mrs. Weasley’s ice cream.

“ _Leave us,”_ Harry said sharply. “ _If you wish me not to tire of your company and never to speak to you again, leave us._ ”

The snakes remained still for long moments more. Harry could feel them all but reconsidering what he had said to them, if magical creatures formed of water could be said to consider anything. He had no idea what would happen next, and would have held his breath if he thought it would do any good.

Then the snake unwrapped from Malfoy and passed into the depths of the lake like a wave running parallel. The snake in front of Harry followed it, with one mournful glance from large crystalline eyes as though to say that he hadn’t had to scold it like that to get it to leave. Harry shook his head and turned to Malfoy.

“The key to the riddle ought to be around here somewhere,” he said. “Where would you suggest looking?”

*

Draco stared at Potter for long, intense moments without moving. He knew he owed his life to Potter’s quick thinking—and the coincidence of Severus and Dumbledore setting snakes as guards when Potter could speak Parseltongue—but that was nothing unusual. He owed life-debts to Potter from the war, still. 

No, what he wanted to contemplate was the fact that Potter had come through the battle and yet looked completely calm, as though this was an everyday occurrence for him. His magic didn’t boil the water around him. He floated in place without a sign of undue agitation. Draco wondered whether fighting for his life was an outlet for his anger, and why it would be so. Could his anger be connected to his magic alone?

“Where do you think it is, Malfoy?”

At Potter’s languidly patient question, Draco forced himself back into motion. Potter’s face was flushed now, his hands clenched as though he wanted to beat Draco for staying silent. They would lose or at least waste time if they argued now.

Draco turned to study the water where the serpents had been hovering. It made no sense that they had attacked them at this point in the lake unless the secret they guarded was close at hand, and Draco didn’t think they had to destroy the serpents to find it, no matter what Dumbledore had said about a fight to the death. Such guardians as those could only be driven away for a time, not destroyed.

Another glitter caught his eye, this time like light flashing off a diamond. Draco smiled grimly, held his wand up, and performed the Summoning Charm.

The ring that tumbled towards him through the water glowed only with magical light; being in the lake for years had tarnished it. Draco recognized it, though. Severus had worn the ring a few times when he gave private lectures to the Slytherins, mostly to fill them with curiosity and dread about what it might mean.

The dark stone on the top still twisted. Draco wrenched it to the side and shook it. A tiny bubble floated out, enclosing a piece of magically protected parchment. Draco smiled and reached inside the cavity the stone had covered, and a second bubble came to hand, cradling a smaller twist of paper.

“One of these will be a word or words to unlock the wards,” he told Potter. “The other will be the next riddle.”

Potter nodded slowly. “I never would have thought of opening the ring,” he admitted. “You’re smarter than you look, Malfoy.”

For a moment, just a _moment_ , the look on his face was open admiration, the flush on his cheeks possible to take as symptomatic of something other than anger.

Draco experienced a flash of a vision, not dissimilar from the ones he received when he came up with a new potion. This one, though, showed not a list of ingredients, an altered recipe, or a finished potion, but Potter kneeling at his feet, staring up at him with that same expression. His hands were behind his back as if bound there, and his magic crackled and danced around him, kept within strict limits, on Draco’s orders alone.

He turned his gaze to the side and kept it there for a moment, hoping Potter had not noticed the change in his expression. “I knew this ring from the time that Severus wore it,” he said shortly. “Come.” He swam towards the surface.

Potter followed him, but slowly. Draco almost wondered, later, if he’d had a premonition of his best friends and Covington waiting for them by the shore of the lake.


	4. A Culmination of Desires

Harry paused in the act of pulling himself out of the lake when he saw that Ron and Hermione were two of the people waiting for him. Then he completed the pull, but he made sure that they saw the boredom on his face and the utter lack of urgency in his movements.

_They can’t make me do anything. They’ll never make me do anything again._

Hermione would probably think that was strange, since she thought he needed orders to live. But Harry had a very definite idea of who he should allow to command him, and it didn’t include any of the people around him. It probably included no one, since no one seemed to want the job.

Harry grimaced and made sure that no trace of his thoughts showed in his expression when he glanced at the other woman waiting behind Hermione, who must be Covington from Malfoy’s description. He couldn’t afford to show his personal weaknesses to someone who wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of them.

“Madam Covington, I assume?” he said, and saw the slight flicker of surprise around her lips as her smile faded a bit.

“Mr. Potter,” she said. “Have your investigations borne fruit?”

“What a strange way of putting the matter,” Malfoy’s voice said in an effortless drawl, and then he came up and stood at Harry’s shoulder as though he belonged there. His hand even rested on Harry’s back with a brief, violent press, as if he was telling Harry silently to let him handle this. Harry stared at him from the corner of his eye. Malfoy chose to take no notice. Instead, he went on speaking in a slightly dry voice that said they had been partners for years and invited Harry to share the joke. “We are not trees. We are a highly skilled Potions master and former Auror, looking into a private matter for the sake of private loyalties, rather than at the request of the Ministry.”

“Pardon me,” said Covington, with a bow that Harry thought would have done credit to Umbridge when she was trying to impress someone. “I had thought you would not have known about this chance but for the Ministry.”

Malfoy’s nostrils flared a bit, but Harry wasn’t sure why—unless maybe Covington was hinting that Malfoy had spies in the Ministry or some other way to hear about the riddles and the task of finding the key to the wards. He might even, for all Harry knew. But Harry really wouldn’t have known about this without the letter from the Ministry.

That meant he could take the lead in the conversation without any self-consciousness, and Malfoy could stay silent. _We actually do make good partners in that one way,_ Harry admitted to himself. “We don’t owe the Ministry a debt because of that,” he said. “Not when you sacked me and irritated Malfoy because you said that you might shut down Slytherin House.”

Malfoy tensed behind him, then relaxed again. Harry pressed hard against his hand, trying to send a message without words. _She has to know that you’re interested in Slytherin by now. It’s not a weakness to say so._

“We obviously have different interpretations of the word ‘debt.’” Covington inclined her head in a shallower bow. “Have you found what you sought?”

“Why should we tell you, when it would be more useful for us to strike a bargain with the Ministry?” Harry asked, and then waited for her reaction.

Covington pursed her lips as if tasting something sour. Then she shook her head slowly. “I am not empowered to make those bargains.”

“Then you understand that we can say nothing until we meet with someone who is,” Malfoy said, and made the words sound smart and sophisticated and polished, as if he were handing over chunks of pure silver. Harry gave him a sideways look of admiration that Malfoy unexpectedly met. “Come on, Harry. Pick up your robes and shirt and let’s discuss what we should do next.”

Harry blinked, then picked up the clothes with a frown. _Why did he call me Harry? To make the others think we’re closer than we are, I reckon. I just wish he hadn’t done it without asking me._

“You’re _not_ going to do that,” Hermione said in a piercing voice, stepping forwards so that she blocked their way to the school. Covington was particularly happy to let her do it, Harry noticed. _Interesting._ “I know that you found something, or you wouldn’t have a reason to search the lake, and I want to know what it is.”

 _She still thinks she’s entitled to know everything I do and say,_ Harry thought, baring his teeth at her. His magic crackled up around his sides and arms, this time manifesting as a faint blue mist that wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone until they stepped closer to him. Then they would notice it by force. _Probably wants to take notes on my actions and report them to some Healer friend of hers._

“What a mindless bitch you are, Granger,” Malfoy said, in a tone so bored it took Harry a moment to realize what he had said. “Of _course_ we could search places and not find the clues. Do you think that because the lake is a more unusual place, it’s automatically the one where Dumbledore and Severus would have hidden the key?”

Hermione’s confident look faltered. Ron was the one who flushed and said, “See here—”

“I don’t have to,” Malfoy said, with the kind of quiet voice that Harry suspected probably made his customers listen to him when they wanted some impossible potion and he refused to brew it. “I don’t have any obligation to you. You’re only two teachers at Hogwarts among many, and _my_ contemporaries at that. You have no seniority.” He gave Harry a half-smile. “And if Harry has any obligation to you, he hasn’t told me that.”

Harry swallowed through a dry throat and held his head up. The pleading look in Ron’s eyes still had the power to touch him, maybe because Harry had argued with him less directly than with Hermione.

But he couldn’t pretend that the conflict between them had never happened, which seemed to be what they wanted. They could come to him with apologies, and maybe _then_ he would listen. This wound was too deep to be papered over, though.

“Yes, I don’t think I do, Draco,” he said. The name was less difficult than the words, or watching Ron’s eyes shut as he looked away, a deep sigh rattling up from his chest. “They used to be my friends. They lost the right to call themselves that, and they haven’t made it up to me yet.”

Hermione trembled and then abruptly broke out into words that Harry hadn’t thought she would use, since she preferred to keep their row as private as possible. “I don’t think that what you do is wrong!” she shouted at him. “I think it’s wrong for _you_. With all the manipulation and abuse you went through, the way adult men told you to do things that were good for you and you did them—you still haven’t sorted out what you feel about Dumbledore, and you probably haven’t gone and talked to his portrait yet, either—you _still_ think that what he did was excusable, and you’re _still_ messed up in the head—”

Harry felt pure panic storm through him. Ron already knew what Hermione would say, of course, but for the Ministry representative and Malfoy to hear would mean the end of his life as Harry understood it.

He gestured, closing his hand into a fist. A bolt of pure magic, blazing-white, leaped from his fist and struck Hermione in the throat.

She stopped, her hands flying up as she clawed at her neck. Then she coughed. She coughed three times, and a large, curved piece of brass fell out of her mouth and landed with a clang on the grass.

Then she did it again, and more brass came out, and silver, and gold.

Harry licked his lips. He was shaking, but more in control than he had been since he saw Ron and Hermione waiting for him, because _he_ had caused this, not someone else, and if the silence was terrible, at least they were staring at him in terror rather than because he was cowering from it.

“Think about what you say,” he told her. “When you do, then you can speak in something other than carved metal again.”

He turned and made for Hogwarts at a fast, smooth walk, because he thought someone would stop him if he began to run. His hands were sweating, and he could feel the magic working down his face as grains of something that turned out to be salt when he wiped it away.

He was so caught up in his own emotions that it took him long minutes to realize Malfoy was walking beside him, all the way, as if they had practiced this before, his hand on the small of Harry’s back.

Harry spun around to face him when he thought they were beyond the point of being heard and asked in a low voice, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Malfoy wore a faint smile. Harry would have felt reassured if it was amused, or contemptuous, or any of the other easy feelings that he had expected Malfoy to experience around him.

It was speculative instead.

And _curious._

Harry didn’t bother to hide his shudder. If Malfoy thought being curious about him was the route to a deeper alliance and solving these riddles faster, he could shelve the notion, because the last thing Harry wanted was Malfoy prying into his life.

*

It never would have occurred to Draco to make Granger’s own words literally choke her, and he wasn’t sure that he would have had the power if it did. But it was appropriate and amusing, and Potter had acted without that much provocation, compared to what Draco would have thought it would take.

Potter grew more interesting by the minute.

He kept his hand in place on Potter’s back until Potter turned around, pinned him with a gaze that was obviously meant to intimidate someone less strong of will than Draco was, and whispered, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Draco took his time about answering. He examined, in a leisurely fashion, the way Potter’s hair curled, the brightness of his eyes against his pale skin, his long legs and the lean muscles in them, and the flicker of magic that still snapped around his hands. Draco could feel the buzzing aura of that power raising his hair to stand on end, although he stood at least two feet from Potter now.

By the time he finished the inspection, Potter was shifting like a horse with a stranger handling its feet. Draco looked into his face as he gave him the answer. He felt that Potter deserved at least that much from him.

“I think that I’m confirming our alliance in the eyes of others,” Draco said. “What would they think if I dropped my hand from your back the minute we stopped speaking to them? This way, we can encourage them in false beliefs profound enough to influence the way that they interpret everything else we do.”

Potter gritted his teeth. “I _understand_ that,” he said, as if Draco had been planning to accuse him of a lack of understanding. “The problem is, why did you choose that gesture to establish that suspicion?”

“The gesture of the hand on your back?” Draco asked, and moved his hand in as if he would reassume the position.

Potter’s power formed a series of bright blue spearheads, lining his back and pointing straight at Draco. Draco nearly gasped aloud as a new vision came to him, of a potion that might allow him to achieve the same effect.

Potter was an artist, a creative spirit, in the way he used his magic if nothing else. Trouble was, Draco thought, sneaking another glance at his face, he didn’t _mean_ to be so. It wasn’t something consciously planned or controlled. He just lashed out with his magic and let the impulse of the moment guide him.

“Why does this bother you so much?” he asked. “And have you ever tried anything to control your magic? Perhaps you should, before we face another enemy like the water-snakes. We cannot depend on the coincidence of your Parseltongue to save us every time.”

Potter’s gaze grew diamond-like with loathing. Draco wondered if it was the person asking the questions or the questions themselves that he resented, but given that he _had_ been able to get along with Draco before this, if during limited periods of time, he thought it was the questions.

_And isn’t that interesting?_

“I’ll get it under control,” Potter said, between teeth that he seemed determined to wear down with their grinding. “Now. Don’t you think we should look at the riddle and see what it is? We’ll want to solve it as quickly as possible, before the Ministry comes up with some new way to make us investigate.”

Draco nodded and followed Potter into the castle, more than willing to show that he could be reasonable. When Potter started up the entrance hall towards the doors of the Great Hall, though, Draco took his arm and steered him towards the dungeons, where Severus’s rooms were.

Potter shied at the touch, but seemed to yield when Draco put pressure on him and thus dragged him along more firmly. Draco glanced at him and saw that his eyes were closed, lashes fanned out on his cheeks as though he were nothing but a child asleep. His breathing had softened and slowed down, too.

Then he opened his eyes, realized Draco was watching him, and jerked away so hard that he broke one of Draco’s nails and stung all his fingers. Draco refused to show that it hurt, holding Potter in a firm gaze instead. He knew the source of Potter’s strange behavior was here somewhere, and he would like to ferret it out if possible. 

“I’m coming with you,” Potter said, and bounded off ahead of him, seeming to welcome the darkness of the dungeons as it wrapped around him.

Draco clucked his tongue as he followed. Yes, there was something strange here, and he thought it all—Potter’s difficulty with controlling his magic, his odd relaxation when Draco touched him coupled with violent rejection of those touches a moment later, his refusal to answer questions—connected.

_I have to find the binding thread before I can begin to unknot it, however._

Severus would want to know why he _should_ unknot it, when Potter was no more than a somewhat annoying waste of time. Draco could have said that he was doing it to fend off boredom or to make sure that his ally didn’t do something embarrassing in front of their enemies, and Severus would have accepted either of those.

But the truth was simply that he was interested, and in the silence of his head, he didn’t see why he needed any other motive.

*

“You survived the first battle? Wonderful news, my boy.”

Harry bowed his head in front of Dumbledore’s portrait and said nothing. He was still far too aware of Malfoy, who was on the other side of the room in front of the closed door. He could feel the way his fingers had clamped down, how they had resembled, for a minute, the cuff of the chains Harry needed, and the imaginary blast of cool air that had passed through his body in response.

“I would not have imagined that you could pass through without a scratch,” Snape’s sneering voice said from behind him. “It is highly probable that Mr. Malfoy did most of the work, is it not?”

Harry turned his head, glad for a challenge that he could respond to. “As a matter of fact, the trap was snakes, and I still have Parseltongue.”

Snape looked properly stunned. Harry turned back to Dumbledore with a feeling of gratification, only to see Dumbledore shaking his head.

“Will you never make peace?” he murmured, as if in appeal to powers that Harry couldn’t see or understand. “Am I doomed to see the two people who did the most to bring about our victory in the war always quarrel?”

“That isn’t Snape,” Harry reminded him. He didn’t care if his voice sounded brittle and bitter, the way he knew it did—enough that Malfoy, moving up beside him, gave him a quick look of wonder. “It’s a reflection. And we’re not here for you to lecture us. We’re here to read the riddle and the word that unlocks the wards and hear anything that you can tell us about either.”

Malfoy’s arm briefly touched the small of his back, the place where his hand had rested when he escorted Harry up to the castle. Harry arched away from it and turned, holding out his hand.

Malfoy looked at it politely. “We can shake, if you want,” he said, “though I thought we knew each other enough by now not to require it.”

“I want the bubbles that we found in the ring,” Harry said, and his voice was soft and polite and couldn’t crack steel, the way he wanted it to. Alienating Malfoy while he still held the riddle and the first keyword wasn’t smart. But Harry intended to leave as soon as he could, walking away from Hogwarts and talking a long, hot shower in his own bathroom to wash off the sting of contact.

Until he could go back home, though, his lodgings in Hogsmeade would have to do.

“As you wish,” Malfoy said, and dropped both bubbles into his palm. Harry stared at his face, but Malfoy looked calm and guileless, if a bit bored. Harry shook his head and started to examine the bubbles. They looked like they were made of a hard, transparent plastic, but they felt soft and whispery against his palm, like foam.

“We hid the bubbles in Severus’s ring?” exclaimed Dumbledore. “Wonderful! I never would have thought to look there.”

“The ring hardly mattered to me,” Snape drawled. “That would be the reason we used it for the deception in the first place.”

“Thus the point of my remark, my dear boy, that I never would have thought to look there.”

“You included me under that heading,” Snape said. “I would have remembered the insignificance of the ring to my former self and thus _thought_ to look there, because I retain my former self’s memories of placing emphasis on meaningless objects in order to distract the eye of an enemy watching.”

Harry turned the bubbles over and managed to focus on them to the exclusion of the conversation between the portraits. He thought he would go several kinds of mad if he tried to follow it.

The bubbles had subtle, hidden hinges on the side. He ran his fingers over them and muttered a complaint when he realized that they wouldn’t simply spring open.

“Let me try,” Malfoy said, and reached out, his hand covering Harry’s where it gripped both bubbles. Harry tried to pull back, but he didn’t go far enough or fast enough, and the bubbles bounced around between the closed area of their fists. Harry opened his mouth to shout.

The bubbles rolled over of their own accord, and then the tops came off. Harry stared down, and didn’t even try to hide his astonishment.

“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten that,” Dumbledore remarked. “All of the people who find the secret have to have hold of it at the same time, or the bubbles won’t open. You both found it, so you both have to hold them. I think we arranged the hiding places of the other secrets along the same lines,” he added thoughtfully, “but I can’t remember. I don’t mind saying that the lack of those exact memories is an inconvenience to me.”

Malfoy was still clasping Harry’s hand, and staring at him. Harry wrenched his hand away and let the bubbles fall to the floor. He didn’t think it mattered if they broke, and he knew the parchment they contained would flutter harmlessly.

The gesture distracted Malfoy and made him look down. Harry picked up the parchment that had fallen near his feet, leaving the other twist to Malfoy, and looked at it randomly. He wasn’t sure why, but he had expected to see the word that would unlock the wards.

Instead, he’d got the riddle, and he saw at a glance that it was considerably longer and more baffling than the first one that Dumbledore and Snape had given them. The writing was large, and careful, block capitals.

_UPON FOUR LEGS IT GOES IN THE WORLD,_   
_UPON EIGHT LEGS AND TWO TAILS IN OUR LEGEND._   
_CROSS THE SKY WITH THE SUN AND YOU WILL NOT SEE IT,_   
_BUT MORNING AND EVENING IT FLOATS IN BEAUTY._

The last line was isolated from the rest of the riddle and in urgent, small, cramped letters. _Look unto the last._

Harry turned the paper over and cast a charm that ought to reveal any other letters hiding behind the ostensible ones, or invisible lines that would alter the message and make it more meaningful. Nothing happened, of course. That was the riddle they had received, and it was the riddle they would have to deal with. 

Then he looked up at the portraits and made sure to shake his head at both of them. “I think you both liked driving people mental in life.”

“Let me see,” said Malfoy, and passed the parchment he held to Harry as if it were the natural thing to do, while he took the riddle. Harry bristled, but it was hard to have a row with someone who refused to acknowledge the existence of the thing causing the row, so he looked at the keyword with a grunt.

 _Sorting Hat._ Harry rolled his eyes and wondered if the Ministry had tried something that simple as a password. Probably not. They would have decided that it was complicated and proceeded to more and more arcane guesses, assuming they even knew of the existence of the wards.

“Strange,” Malfoy said. His eyes were glinting when he looked up, though, and he resembled someone who thought this was a _good_ thing. Harry studied him warily. He had had one partner like that during Auror training, someone who took that “thrill of the case” nonsense seriously. He would hit Malfoy over the head if he had to, just as he’d hit Trainee Belladonna, to get him out of the way. “What can have four legs in reality and eight legs in legends? Wizarding legends generally change to reflect the reality once we know about it.”

“ _Right_ ,” Harry couldn’t help but say, thinking of how many stereotypes there still were of him as a flawless hero out there.

“When we know about it, I said.” Malfoy’s voice rose to a slightly higher pitch, the only sign that Harry was irritating him. “What are your first theories about this riddle, Potter?”

Harry stared at him. Malfoy looked prepared to settle down to a debate of several hours, and then go right out and fight the battle to the death that they’d encounter if they solved the riddle tonight.

“I have none,” Harry said. “I’m going back to my rooms, getting something to eat and some sleep, and then sleeping some more. I’ll join you in the morning.” He turned towards the door, hoping that Malfoy would have the sense to let him go. Secretly, in the bottom of his heart, he must be as eager to be rid of Harry as Harry was to be rid of him.

“Stay.”

Malfoy’s hand caught his arm at the same moment as his voice sounded in Harry’s ear. He was pressing close, literally leaning on Harry this time, as if he meant to crowd him into the corner. Harry felt his head tip to the side and his eyes flutter shut.

Then he remembered who he was with, and the potential audience to this—a man who had done his best to taunt Harry with any knowledge he possessed of him when he was alive, another man who had manipulated Harry faultlessly and with the best of intentions, and one who would come up with cruel, subtle insults and try to use this as an advantage if he discovered Harry’s hidden needs, because that was just the kind of prat he was.

Harry let his elbow swing into Malfoy’s gut, and took an easy step away from him while he was doubled-over and gasping. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said fiercely.

The flames were crawling up his arms again. It was all he could do to make it out the door without the wood catching fire in his hands.

And, to make matters worse, Ron and Hermione were waiting for him in the corridor. Harry glanced up and down quickly, but saw no sign of Covington. That was the only good thing about this situation, he thought grimly as he faced his former best friends and prepared himself for battle.

“Please,” Hermione said in a whisper. Or at least Harry thought she meant to say that, from the way her lips moved. It was hard when she was choking on an ingot of brass that clanged to the floor a moment later.

“Release her from the spell, Potter.” Ron had his wand out and pointed at him, Harry vaguely noted. He thought he should find that threatening, or at least that Ron meant him to find it threatening.

In his current mood, with the danger that his own body posed to him when he was around Malfoy, the implied threat made him laugh.

Ron’s wand sliced down, and a brilliant flash of light cut across Harry’s cheek. He turned his face to the side to accept the blow, licking his lips as the blood from the slice ran down to his mouth. It gave him a focus and kept him from succumbing to the spinning world inside his head. The spinning had got worse since the first time Malfoy touched him today, and it made him think impossible thoughts and want impossible things. Harry was glad to be able to let it go and concentrate on a more immediate, if more active, problem.

He didn’t need his wand with all the flames and wild magic leaping about him. He closed his hand into a fist instead, and the flames boiled up and around his fingers, then formed into a solid spear of fire. Harry thrust out with it.

It caught Ron’s wand and slapped it out of his hand. The wand hit the floor and started to smolder. Ron would have scrambled for it, Harry thought, but the spear, which rested against his groin, kept him rather effectively in place.

He stared at Harry as he stood there. The effect might have been impressive if he wasn’t standing on tiptoe. Harry, with a slight, malicious sneer that he knew Ron would resent, stalked a few steps nearer. Ron’s eyes started to water.

“You don’t understand yet, do you?” Harry whispered. “I don’t give a fuck about your precious _intentions,_ or your bloody _concern_ for my mental health. Our friendship is over. Leave me the fuck _alone_.”

Ron coughed, and then managed, with that Gryffindor courage that turned into rashness all the time, “I didn’t think Hermione was right, but now I see she is. You _are_ sick.”

“Sick for doing what I have to to control my anger and my magic and keep me from destroying everything in sight,” Harry said, with a nod. “Yes, that’s the right conclusion to draw. It’s not as though I tried everything else and it _failed to work._ Let’s blame me for what does?”

Hermione tried to say something and choked on the tin emerging from her throat. Ron wrapped his arm around her and sneered at Harry. “She would say that it’s not what you did that’s the problem. Other people could do that and get away with it, if they _had_ to.” Ron shuddered. Harry could imagine why; in the days when they were still friends and would confess things to each other, Hermione had told him that Ron was always the one on the ordering side, not the ordered-around side. “But since Dumbledore controlled your life, and other people controlled your life, this is an unhealthy way of coping—”

Harry thought of all the other people who were in the castle at the moment, all the others who could overhear and might ask prying questions or simply guess what was happening from the general content of their conversation.

Fire soared up his spine and burst in his brain.

He had had _enough_. 

He twisted the spear of fire, and Ron had to leap away with a squeal instead of standing there and righteously lecturing him. Harry extended his hand and cast another spell, trying to use up the magic that danced around him and knowing it would never be enough. Already the floor beneath his feet had developed cracks and the ceiling above him was trembling like jelly, as if about to fall.

“You can’t speak about this to anyone who doesn’t already know,” he told Ron, and as he spoke the words, they became true. Coils of wire manifested in the air and twisted around Ron’s throat, then sparked and vanished. “That ought to keep you from spreading news of it around the school like you did with my near-Sorting.”

Ron was gulping in breath as if he wanted to say something else. Harry didn’t stay to hear it. He took off through the dungeons, towards the stairs, trying desperately, through tears that evaporated the minute they left his eyes, to think of what he would do. He _had_ to have the chains, but none of them would hold for long enough, and brief spaces of freedom and peace in his current mindset might actually be worse than nothing at all.

A miraculous thought occurred to him just as he reached the top of the stairs.

_The Room of Requirement._

He altered his direction and ran towards the seventh floor.

*

“I still think this behavior is adolescent,” Severus said, bending over his cauldron.

“But it has revealed something interesting to me,” Draco murmured, bending down to cast a spell on his boots that would keep him from making any sound on creaking stairs or slippery stone, and then rising to add a Notice-Me-Not Charm to his body in general. “I wouldn’t have learned it if I hadn’t been listening at the door.”

Severus sneered at him over his shoulder. “I question whether this information is worth the trouble you have taken to learn it.”

“You can do that,” Draco said, and stepped out of his rooms. 

Weasley and Granger were shuffling up the corridor towards the entrance hall, bent like old Muggles. Draco passed them with a sideways glance that, if they could have seen it, would have stung them with its contempt. Their faces were worn with shock. Draco hadn’t seen what Potter had done—opening the door might have attracted unwanted attention—but he had felt the backwash of magic against his senses. Potter had left them alive and not covered their flesh with suppurating wounds, and that was all they deserved.

Draco came out into the middle of the entrance hall and listened avidly. Covington would probably be down the stairs to trap him in a moment; he thought she had only let them go by the lake because she had sensed that it would be unwise to push Potter just then. He had to locate Potter and learn what he was about before she showed up.

Potter wasn’t trying to be silent, perhaps because he thought his magic would warn anyone with sense to stay away from him. A pattern of stone-dust, accompanied by the pounding of feet and the shrieks of offended portraits, drifted down from above. Draco smiled and took the first staircase he saw.

*

By the time he reached the corridor on the seventh floor, Harry was sweating blood.

He turned and paced up and down in front of the wall, his head whirring with so many different thoughts that he wasn’t surprised when the door failed to appear after three turns. He shut his eyes, conjured a metallic wrist-cuff that closed down hard enough to render his arm numb and gave him a bit of clarity, and formulated his requirement carefully in his head.

_A place where I can find what I need. A place where I can subdue my danger and my magic and get them both under control with the only method that works._

Holding the words to him as if they were precious glass heirlooms, he began to walk back and forth. Time shifted around him. The wrist cuff began to melt. Harry still held onto the words and remembered to count the turns with what felt like a superhuman effort.

He opened his eyes at the end of the third turn, and there it was, an iron door with a grated window that looked into nothing, like a prison. Harry opened it.

*

Draco realized quickly enough what Potter was making for, and began to hurry. If Potter managed to vanish into one of the tangle or maze of rooms that one room could become, Draco would never catch him.

And it was imperative that Draco catch him. He didn’t know why, but it was. 

The iron door was still there when he rounded the corner, and Draco stopped and slowed when he realized that it wasn’t fading. He studied it thoughtfully. What could Potter want inside an Azkaban cell—that was what it looked like—that would so frighten and appall his friends? Draco had honestly thought Gryffindors were less judgmental than that.

Only one way to find out, of course.

Draco gripped the handle. It felt odd in his hand, sweaty, as though it retained moisture from Potter’s. Draco flung the door open, only to find that it wouldn’t fling, but came with an odd, slow shudder and a screeching of hinges.

He looked into the room, and stopped. He could feel surprise locking his feet to the floor and his throat shut.

The room was dim and low, the ceiling dipping until Draco wondered that Potter could stand upright in it. The floor and walls were made of iron, great, hinged plates of it like the one that made up the door. In the center was a bed with metal posts and a steel headboard that had rings projecting out of it, and which completely lacked sheets and pillows. Chains lay across the bed, ending in the rings on one side and cuffs on the other. Potter was frantically trying to lock the cuffs around his wrists, but it seemed they wouldn’t close.

Draco shuddered. The reaction rose deep in his feet and made its way to his chest without rhyme or reason. Draco couldn’t name the emotion that made him short of breath or made his limbs shake. He had never thought of a scenario like this before, never dreamed of it, but…

It made sense. Maybe that was why he did what he did next, because this sight created a matrix that rendered Potter’s odd habits when Draco touched him, the disgust of his friends, and even the vision Draco had had in the lake with Potter kneeling bound in front of him rational and comprehensible and as simple to understand as the properties of bicorn horn in first-year potions.

Draco stepped into the room and shut the door behind him.

As Potter whirled to face him, eyes brilliant with madness, Draco snapped his fingers and spoke to the chains on the bed. “Hold him.”

*

 

Harry saw Malfoy, and he knew he had to destroy him. There was no other word for it. The magic caught at his hair and his face in a white blaze, and he lunged forwards, wanting to use his teeth, like a wolf, knowing he had to use his magic, and envisioning himself tearing Malfoy’s face off—

Then the chains closed around his wrists, locking into place effortlessly, the manacles _clicking_ shut into seamless circles of steel.

And the magic went away.

Harry still reached the full extent of the chains and fell back, the way he always had when struggling against the bonds he had conjured himself. But now there was no magic to pick them apart and strike at the weak places in the links. He could feel the magic coiled sullenly inside him, forced flat and motionless. He would get it back, he thought, but he couldn’t have it now.

_Why not?_

Harry raised his head and saw Malfoy standing by the door that led out from the room, studying him. His arms were folded, his legs were crossed, and one of his feet tapped the floor. He smiled. The smile made bars of violent light cross Harry’s vision, and he screamed and caused the chains to rattle with his lunge forwards again.

“Resist all you like,” Malfoy said. “I don’t think these chains will break.” He paused, and then added, “Even if I don’t understand _why_ , yet. Why was I able to fasten them when they wouldn’t work for you?”

“Go away,” Harry said. His fury nearly choked him, and for long moments he could only stutter until he forced the insults out of his throat again. “Bastard. Arsehole. Scrapings off Voldemort’s boot. Snape’s little fucktoy. I _hate_ you.”

“It sounds as if you do,” Malfoy said. “But I think I have a bit more experience with extreme states of mind than you do. I did what I needed to survive during the war, while you were able to be a hero. That got me used to living with shame and deciding that it didn’t much matter, as long as the shame stayed a private experience.”

“Then you ought to be able to understand _exactly_ why I hate you!” Harry tore to the side. This was the point at which chains made of his magic would have shredded like tissue, and rage tore with sharp claws at his belly when these didn’t, although he also felt another burst of cloudy freedom. The combined emotions made his head spin and increased his desire to spit and yell. “You’re going to take this out of here, and tell Snape, and—”

“But I’m not,” Malfoy said, in a soft, controlled voice Harry hated and envied him for. “This is your business. And mine.” He came a few steps further into the room, boots clicking against the floor. His steps were far more firm and confident than Bradley’s steps had ever been under the same circumstances, or even the steps of Muggles Harry had paid, who understood all about this game and how it was played.

Harry stared at him, panting. Malfoy looked back at him with mild, curious eyes, with the kind of gaze that said he was uninstructed but willing to learn.

_No. This is mental._

Harry wound his fingers in the chains, bent his shoulders, and jerked as hard as he could. The rings bounced and clanked in their settings, the headboard vibrated, but nothing parted. Harry tore again, and again, and the only things he had to show for his efforts were blood blisters along the sides of his hands.

And a growing peace in his head, a draining of the anger that made it hard even to think of new insults for Malfoy.

“You struggle like this all the time?” More quiet clicks of the boots as Malfoy moved closer. Harry raised his head, blinking away the dazzle of bliss that wanted to occlude his vision, and saw Malfoy standing at the foot of the bed now. His gaze was solemn, inward, as if he were waiting for a signal of some sort to make sense of the scene in front of him. “You can’t simply lie back and give in when you feel yourself chained?”

Harry curled his lip. That had been the part that always disconcerted everyone, even the paid Muggles. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s about the size of it.” He measured the distance between him and Malfoy with his eyes, then shifted so that his heels were beneath him. “And that’s my twisted, demented secret that my friends can barely tolerate.”

He leaped forwards, trying to claw Malfoy’s arms if he could do no worse damage. And he thought he could. At the very least, he could wrestle Malfoy onto the bed beneath him and strangle him with the chains.

His shoulders wrenched back hard enough that Harry heard a warning pop. He hissed between his teeth and sagged against a pillow that hadn’t been there a minute before, bewildered. He _knew_ the chains had been long enough to let him reach Malfoy a minute ago. What had happened?

“Why did the pillow show up?” he muttered, the only audible sign he would give of his confusion. His arms felt like dissolving puddles of syrup, and his eyes kept wanting to close. And now he was getting aroused, but even that was soft and gentle, blood flowing to his groin in undulating waves.

“Because I required it,” Malfoy said. He was right beside the bed now, studying Harry with great interest. “Just as I required the chains to be shorter.”

Harry turned his head sharply. He had needed something that would slice through the mist in his head, and that did it.

“You have no business here, Malfoy,” he said. His throat felt metallic, like the bed, and the words rasped and scraped against it. “Why don’t you go spread rumors about the perverted Harry Potter, instead of being here?”

Malfoy leaned towards him, face intense. Harry kept one eye on his hands, ready to strike if he tried to touch him, but Malfoy made no move to do that.

 _Yet._ Harry bared his teeth in warning and waited for his chance. Yes, the chains were reacting to Malfoy’s presence in strange ways, and it helped; Harry already felt healthier and stronger than he had since he had come to Hogwarts. But there was no way that he would allow Malfoy to play more of a part than that.

*

Potter was so fascinating that Draco would have checked for infatuation charms if he could have taken his eyes from him.

But he knew it wasn’t magic, or at least nothing more than the magic of the Room, which had permitted Draco to come in, shorten the chains, and render the bed more comfortable. It was the presence of two heated bodies together, of Potter’s need and the rising force in Draco that drove him to answer that need, of something Draco had never considered and yet which seemed like the thing he had always wanted to do.

It was the force of revelation.

_I want to do this. It’s new. It’s strange. It’s curious._

He felt rather the way he did when he first began experiments with a potion. Would he succeed? Would he fail? What unexpected consequences would appear along the way, to force him to change his initial plans or do something that would change even his intentions? The number of his plans that had gone perfectly was very small. On the other hand, the right mixture of success and failure made brewing piquant. Draco would have found it boring to succeed at every attempt.

He reached out and tried to touch one of Potter’s hunched shoulders, wondering what it would feel like.

Potter lunged, his teeth clacking together. Draco pulled back, staring at him, and then laughed. He had wondered why Potter would try to bite instead of strike him, but Potter already seemed to have learned that the chains would keep him from touching Draco unless Draco willed it. He was clever and learned quickly.

“I want this,” he said, in answer to Potter’s question and to have a chance to voice his own thoughts. “Nothing you can do will drive me away.”

Potter gave him a faint half-smile. Then he pushed off the bed with his heels and somehow whirled his lower body around—he moved too quickly to let Draco see how he had done it—and kicked Draco hard in the legs.

Draco gasped in pain and stood up, because he thought it would be more dignified to do so than to sprawl on the floor the way the force of Potter’s kick _might_ have made him do. He stared at Potter.

“Do you always fight like this?” he asked.

Potter snarled. He didn’t make any noise, but there was nothing else Draco could call the sustained baring of his teeth, combined with the wild look in his eyes that made him seem as if he would take another bite out of Draco. “Always,” he said. “Still want to risk being in bed with me now, Malfoy?”

“You need this,” Draco said. “That means there must come a time when the fighting stops.”

“ _Fuck you, Malfoy._ ”

Potter lunged against the chains again, and this time went sprawling back on the bed with a cry as the chains shortened themselves. Another pair of manacles had appeared at the foot of the bed, Draco noticed, with cuffs invitingly sized for Potter’s ankles. He moved towards them.

Potter flailed out and hit him squarely in the groin with one foot. Draco hissed, tears coming out of his squinted eyes. Then he seized his wand and Stunned Potter. While Potter lay motionless and gaping at the ceiling, he grabbed the manacles and fastened them around Potter’s feet.

Then he lifted the spell and jumped back as Potter twisted his head to the side and nearly succeeded in closing his teeth on Draco’s hand.

“Dear, dear,” Draco murmured, his heart pounding with the excitement and shock. “Am I going to have to put a collar on you as well, to keep you from interrupting when we start playing?”

“Not play.” Potter’s words were beginning to slur, but Draco doubted that came from pain of any kind. His eyes were glazed, his pupils dilated as though he’d had a really good drink—or a really good fuck. “You don’t—understand. This isn’t play to me. I only get myself chained up because it helps—with the anger. Didn’t—give you permission to put the manacles on. Take them _off_.”

“Of course, if you like,” Draco said, and moved towards the chains, slowly, keeping one eye on Potter all the while. He was a much better judge of people in extreme situations than he used to be, and he didn’t think he’d judged this one wrongly.

*

Harry hadn’t felt so close to the edge of pure, peaceful, natural sleep in weeks.

But that was wrong. What he felt wasn’t weariness. The emotions buzzed and shone and zoomed along inside of him, and coursed through his body as magic no longer could. Harry gave a weak kick at the manacles, more to check that they were there than anything else, and felt a deep, thick, inexplicable satisfaction when he heard the clink of the chains and felt the pressure of the cuffs around his ankles.

He thought he was close to sleep because he hadn’t been this relaxed in weeks. Perhaps not ever. He’d never thought of chaining his legs in exactly this way. Most of the time, Bradley and the other people he had tried to convince to do this only felt comfortable with the arms, and Harry had thought he was, too.

Now he realized that maybe what he could live with wasn’t what he needed.

He glanced up at Malfoy, who was reaching towards the chains, ready to loosen them, and his pride returned, a sudden surge of pure emotion that at least didn’t have any anger. Yes, maybe he did need this, but Malfoy wasn’t the one who was going to give it to him.

“Yes,” he said, although his voice wavered. “Take them off.”

Only Malfoy’s raised eyebrow said that he was surprised. He unbuckled one cuff and then reached for the second.

Harry closed his eyes. The room had begun to spin again instead of stabilizing the way it had when he wore both ankle chains. That made no sense, and it wasn’t something Harry would tolerate. He gritted his teeth, told himself that Malfoy was more intolerable than being a bit dizzy, and waited.

The second chain loosened.

As though the loosening had been a signal, thoughts of Ron and Hermione blossomed in his head again. Harry felt the anger rise in him as he thought of their petty, simpering excuses, their smug sureness that they were right, and their claim that he had to face and deal with his “issues with authority figures” in a way they approved. It wasn’t enough that he had found something that worked and hurt no one. They couldn’t be happy for him. No, they had to disagree and coo at him about how he had to do the _acceptable_ thing, the right thing—

“You’re burning,” Malfoy said softly.

Harry opened his eyes. The stupid blanket that either the Room or Malfoy had added to the bed was on fire, and the flames were actually stinging his skin. It seemed some magic had come to the surface after all, but Harry had lost the ability to keep it from hurting him. He swore, rolled over, and kicked at the burning blanket.

A stream of water, conjured by Malfoy, poured down from above and put the fire out. Harry buried his head in his still-chained arms and tried to make them the focus of the universe.

“Why are you so opposed to me being the one to give you what so clearly need?” Malfoy asked from above him. His voice was calm and cool and interested, and he sounded as if he couldn’t care less about the answer, as if it was merely one of a series of things he was interested in and would like to know, and he would ask another question if he couldn’t get this one solved.

“You hate me,” Harry said, lifting his head with an effort. The chains were making his arms ache. He rolled over and stared up at Malfoy, hissing as his shoulders popped. The one he’d wrenched earlier still hurt, and he winced. He didn’t really relish pain that much; he just accepted it as a natural consequence of defying the chains. “Why would I want you to assist me with something so intimate?”

Malfoy smiled. The smile looked strange on his face, and Harry started, realizing only then how much he had braced himself for a sneer. “I don’t think it’s that intimate, is it? I tie you up, and then what? How would it work if you were with someone you trusted?” he added with exaggerated patience when Harry hesitated.

Harry licked his lips. He would be mad to confess the truth to Malfoy. Wouldn’t he?

But the Room wouldn’t give him what he really required on his own. That was all too clear, with the way the chains had refused to fasten until Malfoy had commanded them to. And Harry could feel the sick coil of the anger in his belly. He was so _tired_ of feeling that way. This was the only cure he had ever found.

Of all the people in Hogwarts at the moment, laughable as it was, he would still trust Malfoy the most with something like this.

“Give me orders,” Harry said, closing his eyes so that he didn’t have to see what Malfoy’s face would look like when he said that. “It doesn’t matter what. Simple orders will do. Fifteen or twenty minutes will do.”

Malfoy was silent instead of gloating or refusing the way Harry had expected. Then he said, “And then I fuck you?”

Harry couldn’t help staring at him. Malfoy poised with one knee on the bed, head tilted as if he was examining the muscles of Harry’s stomach.

“Why would you _want_ to?” Harry asked. “No, you don’t have to do that.”

Malfoy gave him another smile and reached down to touch Harry’s stomach, then ran his hand down Harry’s leg. Harry had to shut his eyes as the intensity of the sensation overwhelmed him. His skin was tingling again, sensitized, and the storm of anger was sinking back to join his magic in being trapped far beneath the surface.

“Oh, I want to,” Malfoy said. “But I’m not going to do it until I’ve heard you make the choice, declare that you want me.”

Harry shook his head. Malfoy kept surprising him. “I would have assumed that you’d like the fact that I’m in a difficult position and turning to you because you’re the best of a bad lot,” he said. “It feeds your idea of power, and don’t you get off on that?”

*

Draco felt his jaw tighten. It was with an effort that he forced himself to relax and give Potter a condescending look. It wasn’t rational to expect Potter to know why he would be insulted by that, after all, and Draco prided himself on his rationality.

“I was the best of a bad lot during the war,” he said. “I was the only one who could save my parents, and I could only do that by cooperation with the Dark Lord. I didn’t have any choice. And I wasn’t anyone’s first choice for anything. The Dark Lord only used me as a torturer because it amused him to see the sick expression on my face. Severus only went on the run with me because he had no choice. My friends wouldn’t stand with me until I threatened and bribed them.” He had to pause and take a deep breath so that the memories of a hurt, despised teenage boy wouldn’t overwhelm him. “After that, I promised I would only associate with people who came to me willingly.”

Potter sucked his lip, looking up at him. His eyes were dark, and Draco wondered if he would have to turn his back after all and walk out of here. He didn’t want to. There was something that made his breath catch about seeing Potter chained up like this, something that made him _want_ to give Potter orders, and although it was a new thing to him, it wasn’t something hurtful or that he couldn’t face.

Then Potter’s eyes seemed to clear, and he nodded.

“Speak it,” Draco ordered, pressing his hand down into Potter’s stomach and making him grunt. “I want to hear you say it.”

Potter scowled at him, and fought an obviously long and silent battle with himself. Draco waited, never moving his hand or his eyes. This was unexpectedly—easy, he thought. If Potter had put on chains, he himself had shed them when he stepped into this room.

“Yes, all right?” Potter said at last. His voice was heating up again, and he had ground his fingers into the chains hard enough to tear open bloody slashes along them. “I want you to—to order me about.” His face was flushed.

“To fuck you?” Draco asked softly. His mouth was dry now. He swung his other leg onto the bed and removed his hand from Potter, which made his palm itch. He wanted to reach back down and touch him again at once.

Potter shut his eyes. There was sweat on his forehead, and his breathing had sped up to the point that Draco would have been concerned about him if he had thought there was anything legitimate to be concerned about. But he didn’t. He waited, instead, and Potter finally gratified him by snarling, “Yes.”

Draco didn’t smile. Neither did he lunge down and grasp Potter’s mouth in a furious kiss, though he thought Potter might have preferred that; it would have given him less time to think. Instead, he kissed him coolly, pressing his palm back into place on Potter’s stomach as much to hide the shaking of his hands with excitement as to indulge his desire to touch Potter again.

“Strip,” he said, sitting back on his heels.

Potter gave him a dirty look and lifted his chained wrists in silence.

“That’s up to you to figure out,” Draco said, and gave a deep laugh, surprising himself. Yes, he was flying, or felt as if he was, the taste of Potter’s mouth in his own and the feel of Potter’s skin beneath his hands propelling him to new and extravagant heights. “And don’t talk,” he added, when Potter started to open his mouth to complain. “Groaning, whimpering, and sighing are perfectly acceptable.”

*

Harry locked his teeth together and shifted back against the headboard so that he could have more slack in the chains to work with. Even then, it took him four tries to get a grip on the bottom of his shirt because his hands were shaking so hard.

The cool metal of the headboard against his back should have grounded him, but it didn’t. And he was horribly afraid that he looked stupid, with his flushed face and rapidly fluttering eyelashes and glazed eyes that made him have to blink before he could see anything like a normal person.

Bradley and the other Muggles hadn’t ordered him around like this. Bradley tended to give the orders in a nervous voice. The Muggles would snap and sound like Aurors arresting a suspect. Malfoy alone spoke in this detached, cool tone, as if he wanted to see what Harry had to offer before he would concede to become emotionally involved.

It was _wonderful._ Just what he needed. Coolness to soothe the fire inside him. The anger had swirled away as if going down a drain; the magic was sleeping so far beneath his skin that Harry could no longer feel it.

He couldn’t have said that it was what he needed, though. Malfoy had already taught him something new about himself, plucked a desire from thin air that Harry didn’t know he had and given it body and breath.

And _that_ was bloody terrifying.

 _It’ll be all right,_ Harry told himself as he got the right grip finally and managed to pull the shirt back until it caught in the chains where they stretched over his shoulders. Then he had to maneuver his arms some more until the chains and his wrists both popped and the shirt worked free. _We’ll only be together for a few more days, however long it takes us to solve the riddles and get around the Ministry. You can endure that long._

He did wonder, though, as he started work on his trousers, if it would be possible to become addicted to Malfoy’s way of handling him in one session. That could be disastrous when he left Malfoy behind.

It didn’t matter, he reassured himself again. He would deal with it the same way he had dealt with not being able to get what he needed from Bradley all the time: ignore the issue, and sometimes take the smaller steps of chaining himself with magic or hiring Muggles when it became intolerable. Somehow, he would get through it. He would live.

He stripped himself quickly of trousers, and followed it with his pants. Then he turned and glanced defiantly up at Malfoy. He knew that he didn’t look like a model or the impossibly beautiful young men he sometimes saw in Muggle magazines. He had too many scars. He was too thin. He had lived too long under stress, and that showed in the boniness of his legs and the way his limbs sometimes waved about because he didn’t know how to handle himself.

But Malfoy watched him with a greedy expression that made Harry shiver, because he realized now that Malfoy might want to devour him, and he wasn’t sure that he could prevent that or hold it back.

“Very nice,” Malfoy said, in a murmur so soft that it was hard for Harry to distinguish from the rustling of the sheets as Malfoy leaned forwards. “ _Very_ nice. Now, sit still. I’m going to bind your feet again.”

Harry shuddered so hard that Malfoy, staring as obsessively at Harry’s stomach as he was, couldn’t have missed it. He raised an eyebrow. “Do you object to that? Nod if you do.”

Harry licked his lips. He wasn’t afraid of being bound. He was afraid of what it would do to him, of the intensity of sensation he would experience.

Malfoy seemed to know that, because his face turned bright with his sneer. “How have you survived so long? Most people I know like this are comfortable and at home with their desires. The ones who aren’t confine them to fantasy. They don’t come halfway like you and then hesitate as if they’re about to run home.”

Harry glared at him and thrust his feet out. Malfoy could chain him, fine. He would be the one who had to deal with it if Harry suddenly panicked or started thrashing around and hit him in the face with his elbow. He would be the one who had to deal with it if this was a less than satisfying sexual experience for him.

Malfoy laughed at whatever he saw in Harry’s face, and linked the cuffs of the chains around Harry’s feet. Then he bent and whispered to them, and suddenly the chains shortened on both sides, so that Harry found himself stretched taut across the bed before he even thought about what might happen.

He shut his eyes. God, he was dizzy with the relief that coursed through him, the sudden ease of stress and the feeling that he was cradled and held, as if the chains were protective armor guarding him from the world. He moaned.

“Good,” Malfoy said, his voice throbbing down deep in Harry’s midsection. “Spread your legs.”

That wasn’t easy for Harry to do, either, given the chains on his ankles, but he had long since accepted that Malfoy didn’t care about that. It made it more exciting, actually. Malfoy was trusting Harry to find the solution, and that was about the level of authority that Harry could handle right now. He drove his legs apart as far as they would go, and groaned again when his bonds pulled in resistance.

The bed dipped. Harry blinked, frowned a bit when he realized that sheets now covered it—when had that happened?—and tipped his head back to look at Malfoy.

“Nod if you require much preparation,” Malfoy whispered.

Harry nodded to him. He could feel his face heating up more. Malfoy was still clothed, and Harry was naked. And—well, fuck, it wasn’t as if he did this all the time. Bradley didn’t always fuck him. And Harry had held off as long as he could before he went to Bradley or someone else for his relief.

“Ah,” Malfoy said, and looked even more pleased than usual. Instead of pulling lube out of a pocket, though, he started to undress.

Harry’s eyes focused on his cock when it emerged first, and it was so dark with blood, against Malfoy’s pale skin, that he didn’t think he could look anywhere else.

*

Potter’s eyes were wonderfully large as they focused on his erection. Draco gave one of his private smiles and shoved his trousers and pants down his hips with one motion, before he went back to his shirt.

Potter’s body was wonderful, as well. He seemed to act as if he had hideous blemishes, but Draco didn’t see why. There were no Weasley freckles, for example. There were scars, but Draco carried his own share of those, like the silvery scars on his chest he was now revealing to Potter’s eyes. He was perhaps thinner than was fashionable, but that made it more exciting for Draco. He imagined that it would be like fucking a slim, lithe cat.

Besides, Potter was held-down, trapped and helpless, on the bed, of his own free will. Potter could have had freckles and Draco would _still_ have enjoyed it.

He dragged off the last of his clothes and sat still, letting Potter look at him all he liked. Potter was already biting the inside of his cheek and sucking on his lip. Draco enjoyed those expressions of lust, especially since he’d forbidden Potter to speak. He wondered if Potter knew he was making them.

He glanced once at the manacles holding Potter’s feet and pondered if he should lengthen them so that Potter could spread his legs more. Then he shook his head. Potter would have to actually be in pain before Draco would want to change anything about this moment.

He reached out a commanding hand, and the small table he had envisioned, with the pot of lube on it, manifested by the time he finished the gesture. Draco smiled again—he didn’t know the last time he’d smiled so much—and uncapped the pot, dipping his fingers into the liquid inside. It was orange, and orange-scented.

Draco rolled it between his hands as he studied Potter thoughtfully. He was going to enjoy this, yes, but he hadn’t really done this sort of thing very often. He thought he wouldn’t want to do it with anyone other than Potter.

He didn’t know if he could get Potter to do it _again_ , though.

 _Think about that later,_ he told himself, and reached down to Potter’s arse. _You don’t even know that this is going to be good enough to want to repeat._

Potter tensed and shivered when Draco stuck his fingers in, and when Draco added more lubricant, it didn’t make any difference. Draco looked up and found that his face was pale, his eyes shut and his breathing shallow. 

“Do you want to stop?” Draco asked. Potter could still nod even if he couldn’t speak a refusal. Besides, Draco thought he would break his self-imposed rule of obeying Draco’s orders if he was in real danger.

Potter opened his eyes and gave him a dirty look. Draco shrugged and slid his fingers home. Potter’s breath caught, and his face turned paler still. But he didn’t groan in pain or scream a rejection, so Draco pushed his fingers further in still, sighing aloud at the thought of the warmth that would surround his cock soon.

“Up,” he told Potter. “Spread your legs further.”

Potter grunted and heaved himself up, his eyes opening with a calmer, saner look in them. He used the order as a means to cling to sanity, Draco thought as he spread his fingers and slid a third one in between them. Why? Who knew. Draco wasn’t yet interested enough in the intricacies of Harry Potter’s psychology to spend a lot of time thinking about them.

Potter was regularly closing and opening his eyes the next time Draco looked, for all the world as if he were trying to blink a signal to someone. Draco rolled his eyes and chose to ignore that. His attention was for that wonderful warmth, easing open and shut now in nearly the same rhythm as Potter’s eyes.

He tried to reach Potter’s prostate, but didn’t manage to. He shrugged. He could always order Potter to fuck himself on Draco’s cock.

Then he was putting the lubricant aside with a hand that, annoyingly, shook—at least Draco didn’t think Potter was in the right kind of mood to notice—and pressing himself into the sheath that Potter’s body had become with a groan.

Potter stopped breathing altogether. Draco didn’t mind the extra tightness, but he’d prefer not to have to stop their fucking because Potter had fainted.

“Breathe,” he said, in the same light, cold tone he had used to give the other orders.

Potter choked on air or his tongue but began breathing again, a surprised expression on his face. Draco slid all the way in and waited to hear what other sounds he would make, to see what other expressions he would have.

Potter’s mouth fell open, his face twisted and reddened, and he spent a few moments panting in what looked like agony. Then he gave a groan that shook as much as Draco’s hand had, and his head banged back against the pillows, flattening one and scattering the other. His second sound was a tiny whimper.

An _ecstatic_ whimper.

Draco smiled. He’d had too many lovers not to recognize the sound. He pushed himself forwards once again, taking a grip on Potter’s hips, and released as much tension as he could in the thrusts of a brutal, hard fucking.

*

No one had ever been inside him like this.

Harry’d had lovers before. Of course he had. Sometimes the Muggles he paid had fucked him. He’d been Bradley’s lover in other scenarios and situations than this particular one, especially since Bradley was so jumpy about doing this unless Harry spent several days talking him into it first. It had been fun enough, pleasant enough. Even with the Muggles, Harry had drifted, paying more attention to the chains around his limbs and the orders they gave until the moment when they began to stroke his cock.

But this time…

It hurt, and it was glorious, because Harry could hear the orders echoing in his head, feel the chains around both his wrists and ankles, and feel, too, the relentless push of Malfoy’s hips all at once. Malfoy _demanded_ that he pay attention, rather than floating away into a world of his own where he only had to experience the most powerful and pleasant sensations. And that made Harry, in turn, more aware of things like the roughness of the blanket beneath his back and the ache in his hips where he was spreading his legs against the pull of the manacles.

How was Malfoy doing that? Was it just that he wasn’t a Muggle, or that they were fucking in a magical room that would obey his will as well as Harry’s?

That had to be it, Harry decided with a slight gasp as Malfoy forced himself deeper. There was no reason for this to be so different from his other fucks except that the ankle chains and magic were involved.

Malfoy rocked above him. Harry stared up and found that Malfoy’s eyes were fixed on his face, his expression keen with pleasure, his face flushed with blood that made it darker than Harry had ever seen.

“Push back with me,” Malfoy said. “Move with me.” And those could have been things that anyone would say to a lover, which would have broken the spell for Harry, except that he used the same tone of voice. They were demands. He didn’t care about Harry’s comfort or the problem the ankle chains would present.

It was so _refreshing_ to have someone just give Harry what he needed and otherwise seek his own pleasure that Harry complied without thinking about it, pushing back as hard as he could. Shocks ran through him, both because Malfoy had found his prostate and because Malfoy was suddenly pressed deeper inside. Harry had thought he was deep _before_ , that he couldn’t get any deeper. Now he knew better.

He started to say, “So _good_ ,” but that would have meant violating the order. It was astoundingly easy to push the words down and just moan in approval.

“Yes,” Malfoy said, and kept it up, a stream of mindless _yeses_ as he moved above Harry, head thrown back, eyes dreamy.

Harry watched him hungrily. He looked even better when he lost that keen focus of attention and Harry could feel that he didn’t matter, that he wasn’t that important in this situation. In fact, maybe that was the difference. Most of his lovers had to keep a focus on him to please him, and Bradley liked to know what Harry thought every step of the way.

Harry was sick of all that attention, though. He got it enough outside of the bedroom, if not as much of it as he used to. He could use a little ignoring.

Now Malfoy’s expression stabbed him forcefully in his brain, which Harry knew was just as much an erotic organ as anything in the body. He writhed and lifted his hips and yelped and yowled, and couldn’t have said why.

It did bring Malfoy’s attention back to him, though. He smiled a bit and reached out to stroke Harry’s cock.

Harry shook his head frantically, and would have spoken if he’d thought it would have any other result than Malfoy stopping at once. He didn’t know much about this new version of Malfoy who was willing to do things like sleep with him, but he did think that he was a man of his word, and that he would slide out of Harry altogether if Harry violated one of his orders.

“Oh?” Malfoy retracted his hand slowly, fingers spread as though he wanted Harry to see them all and understand what he was giving up. “You want to come untouched?”

A storm of roaring shot through Harry’s head, and he felt like _himself_ for the first time in almost a year, although he could feel his face painfully flushing at the same time because of Malfoy speaking those words aloud. He bobbed his head in exaggerated fashion and then tilted it back against the pillows, welcoming what he knew was going to happen.

The anger was gone. The magic was gone. He was the man he wished to be and couldn’t be most of the time, someone who felt _happy_. 

The happiness mingled with the pleasure as white flashes crossed his vision and his hips jerked up. Harry lifted his head in time to see himself coming all over Malfoy’s stomach and his own, the wetness leaking down his legs and getting on the blankets. Then he lost all that strength and let his head fall back, because he didn’t have a lot of choice. 

“Oh,” Malfoy said, voice breathy and restricted. _His_ hips tensed, too, and he buried himself so deep that Harry croaked out one more cry of protest. Then he came, bouncing and sighing, his breath rattling out through his teeth at the last.

In the aftermath, Harry shut his eyes and lay there. He was drained, empty, still, spent, at peace—

And _himself_.

That was what he really sought in those adventures with Bradley and the other Muggles, and now with Malfoy. Not to be dominated, not to be free of control, but to be himself, the person he could remember being before the war and his unreasonable anger. He got to lie there with random thoughts drifting through his head and feel his hands as though they belonged to him. His mind was clear in the way that he wanted it to be, without succumbing to other impulses.

One experience of control was necessary to free himself from the control of everything else.

Harry smiled. It was a bright, pointed thought, at least halfway intelligent, and he knew that he never would have had it ordinarily. He flicked his eyes open lazily and moved his hands out from the sides so that he could look at the chains around his wrists.

“Mind removing these, Malfoy?” he asked.

*

Draco didn’t let himself fall on Potter, because that was undignified. 

And because he liked the position he was in, his elbows resting on Potter’s stomach, his head dangling, his cock still buried and twitching. The wetness drying on his stomach would bother him in due time, as would kneeling between Potter’s legs like this, but right now it didn’t.

That had been—intense. Exhilarating. The kind of experience that brewing a new potion often gave him, without the danger.

Draco opened his eyes and looked down at Potter. He was smiling. Draco licked his lips. It might not be a bad thing to be able to cause smiles like that, always provided, of course, that one didn’t have to pay too high a price for it.

He would have reached down and stroked Potter’s cheek, but just then Potter opened his eyes and _spoke_ , violating Draco’s order. Draco was brought back so suddenly to the world outside the Room that he actually missed what Potter said, until he glanced up in annoyance, rattled the chains, and asked, “I said, would you take these off?”

Draco licked his lips again. “I think you’ve forgotten something, Potter,” he said, and if his voice was not quite the whipcrack he wanted it to be, it was a good approximation.

“Oh, that you ordered me to be quiet?” Potter shook his head. He was sitting up now, though he had the sense to lean back against the headboard enough so that the chains wouldn’t cut into his skin more than they already had. “Well, that’s over, now. But I think the Room still has to have your command to get rid of the chains, so—”

The chains around Potter’s ankles and wrists abruptly sprang open. Potter stared at them, not looking more surprised at the moment than Draco felt. Then he shrugged, grinned, and pulled away from Draco. Draco gasped as he slid out, but Potter didn’t bother glancing at him. Instead, he rose and started to cast Cleaning Charms on himself.

Draco fell on the bed and stared blankly at the solid, bending curve of Potter’s back. How could he leave something so intense behind him as if it had never happened?

“Where are you going?” he asked. His voice was a rasp. He didn’t like that, and turned to pick up his own wand.

“Out,” Potter said. “Thanks for fucking me like that. It gets the anger out.” He was getting dressed now, and making for the door of the Room at the same time.

“You never stay with your lovers?” Draco asked. “Not even when they—” _do this for you,_ he was going to say, but he didn’t want to reveal that the experience had meant more to him than Potter. He settled for pinching his lips shut instead.

Potter stared at him over his shoulder. He stared for so long that Draco finished the Cleaning Charms and reached for his own clothing. He remained still after that, though, because he didn’t want Potter to think he was using the clothes as a shield.

Potter pushed his straggling curls back over his shoulders, shoved his foot into a final boot, and shrugged. “It’s not about the sex for me,” he said simply. “That’s just a convenient conduit. If I could find some other way to get rid of the anger, then I would.” His face darkened for a moment. “And that way, I probably wouldn’t have fought with Ron and Hermione.”

“That was the source of your row?” Draco tried to take pleasure in this new knowledge, to stop feeling like he had just been kicked. It was difficult.

Potter nodded. “They think it’s pathological for me to like being ordered around by a big, powerful man after that’s what Dumbledore did.” He flushed abruptly. “Not that you’re big. But the point stands.”

Draco struggled for long moments to find the right words. “What’s _pathological_ ,” he said at last instead, “is your attempt to say that it’s not about the sex for you. Haven’t you ever thought about why that’s so? Haven’t you ever tried to find a lover who wouldn’t mind doing this for you?”

Potter’s face closed as tight as the wards of Severus’s lab. “I don’t ask questions like that,” he said shortly. “They never go anywhere I want to go.”

Draco realized a moment later why that would be true, and cursed himself for a fool. Granger and Weasley kept trying to get Potter to question the foundations of his sexuality. He wouldn’t want to do the same thing with Draco involved.

Potter flung open the door and left, sending it spinning against the wall. Draco watched him go, and then sat in motionless thought for a few more moments.

He knew only two things at the end of that period of thought, however.

He wanted to do that with Potter again.

And this was considerably more complicated than Potter just being able to take orders from him, and Draco being able to give them.


	5. Eight Legs and Two Tails

“Mr. Potter. I trust that there are no obstacles to speaking to you now?”

Harry smiled with his mouth alone. He had gone back to Hogsmeade after he had sex with Malfoy last night and had his best sleep in months, then eaten so heartily that some of the other people in the Three Broomsticks had stared at him. This morning he had walked in early, because he thought they had wasted enough time over the second riddle and Malfoy would probably want to talk about it.

And, of course, Covington had waylaid him before he got to Malfoy.

“Of course not,” Harry said, and shifted his stack of papers from hand to hand, as if he were controlling impatience. That would make her think she had some advantage over him. In reality, with the anger banished yesterday and Harry’s confidence that he could handle this situation while he stayed at Hogwarts, he was better able to combat her than he’d ever been. “Do you wish to go to your office?”

Covington looked around as if she were only now realizing that they stood in the middle of the Hogwarts grounds, not far from the lake. “I find conversations conducted in the open air extremely stimulating, Mr. Potter,” she said. “I would prefer to stay here.”

If she’d expected him to object, Harry was determined to disappoint her. He merely inclined his head and turned to follow her along the banks of the lake. He would make her speak first, though.

But Covington seemed to have the same tactic in mind, since she didn’t speak but just walked along with her gaze bent on the ground. Harry rolled his eyes mentally and gave in, as far as he thought it advisable to do so. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I know that you found the solution to the first riddle in the lake,” Covington said softly. “I know that you’ve spoken to Headmaster Dumbledore’s portrait the way we asked you to. I know that you’re keeping secrets from the Ministry.” She turned her head and fixed him with large eyes, while she waited for him to respond.

Harry’s first impulse was to think that Malfoy must have betrayed him. How else could Covington know about everything they’d striven to keep secret?

But then he took a deep breath and focused his thoughts more precisely. Malfoy had every reason to despise and fight the Ministry when they were going to get rid of Slytherin. He had told Harry as much, and Harry really doubted that Covington would have reversed herself on that simply to get Malfoy’s cooperation. She probably didn’t have the power to promise something like that anyway. 

It was a usual Ministry tactic, though, to pretend to know something they didn’t, for the purpose of making people opposed to them distrust each other. They were already doing it with pure-bloods and Muggleborns when Harry left.

He sighed, as though he was sorry for her, and said, “You don’t really know anything. And of _course_ I’m keeping secrets from the Ministry. How much I hate everyone there, for instance. You know that I hate you, yes, but not how much,” he added when she opened her mouth.

Covington shut her mouth again and frowned at him severely. “There’s no reason for your hostile tone, Mr. Potter. We could work together.”

“Could we?” Harry offered the question up like a scone on a plate and then waited.

Covington fell for it. “Of course. The Ministry reconsiders its policies on Hogwarts constantly, and will revise them every year. You could be a part of that process, an _honored_ part of that process, with the chance to speak your mind on the policies that you consider dangerous, damaging, or unnecessary.”

“Hm,” Harry said. Hermione, he thought, would be salivating at the chance for something like this. She would probably say that it was a wonderful compromise and they should take it because they wouldn’t get a better choice.

 _Strange,_ Harry realized after a moment of stunned astonishment that he was without anger. _I can even think about my former best friends without immediately getting upset. Malfoy fucking me did me more good than I realize._

Then Harry remembered the chains and the way he had felt with his ankles held down, and shook his head. It had nothing to do with Malfoy. He’d simply had someone who knew how to tie him down the way he liked. If he found one person who could do that, then he’d find another. He’d make sure to ask for ankle chains the next time he was with a Muggle.

“Does this mean that you’re declining our offer, Mr. Potter?”

Harry glanced up. Covington was walking beside him, staring at him, and of course she knew nothing of his private thoughts or the fact that Harry had shaken his head in response to them. She would think that the Ministry was the only important thing he could consider, because it was the most important thing in the world to _her._

“I’ll have to think about it,” Harry said.

Covington accepted that graciously, where someone less intelligent might have pressed him and been rejected. Harry had to admire her, and to wonder why the Ministry hadn’t sent her in the first place, rather than Wimpledink. She nodded, bowed, said, “I will be in my rooms during the whole of the day, if you’d like to speak with me, Mr. Potter,” and turned towards the school.

Harry watched her go, not following until he was sure that the doors of the entrance hall had shut firmly behind her. He had no intention of accepting her offer, of course, but he thought the offer was an interesting weapon to have. Malfoy would have ideas of how they could twist it around and use it to stab Covington and her kind in the back.

 _Malfoy_.

Harry experienced a brief wash of trepidation at the notion that he would see him in a few minutes, and then shook himself. They’d fucked, and that was all. Harry had always rolled out of bed and left his lovers behind, because once they’d given him what he needed, he had no idea what to do with them. Bradley was the only exception, and that only because Harry would come back and have normal sex with him on other days when his anger hadn’t built up.

Malfoy couldn’t even be that much to him.

Harry shook himself again. He felt strangely _sorry_ about that, and it simply wouldn’t do.

*

Draco ignored Severus’s murmur about how he must be feeling overwrought. He was too busy lashing the sentient potion back into the cauldron for the fourth time that morning. It had come out quickly the first two times, but it was cowed now, and Draco had had to wait nearly an hour for it to emerge between the third and fourth occurrences.

He was wise enough to know that his anger wasn’t at the potion and he could take it out in other ways, on other things, but he saw no reason to do so. The anger would be useful in taming the potion and doing some of the things Draco needed to do this morning. It would not be useful for others, and it would be best if Draco had worn himself into calmness before Potter arrived to discuss the riddle.

The tendril of potion he was watching began to creep down the other side of the cauldron. Draco stepped around the cauldron in response and rapped it busily with the copper wire he had selected that morning. He had thought copper might be even better than steel, and so it proved. The potion made an audible bubbling noise of misery and climbed back into the cauldron of its own free will.

“I wonder what Potter would say if he could see you at the moment,” Severus remarked.

Draco stiffened, which he knew would tell Severus the shot had gone home, but he thought he recovered nicely. “He would have no chance to offer an opinion,” he said coolly, and put a Stasis Charm on the cauldron to hold the potion while he discussed matters with Potter. He thought it probably time for him to arrive, though of course he might need an extra half-hour because of Potter’s laziness. “I would never allow him in my lab while I was brewing. I thought I had told you that before.”

“But this is my lab,” Severus said. “I might see him here. I might see him staring at you with flushed cheeks and eyes bright with desire—”

Draco shot him an irritated look. Portraits in the castle had seen Draco and Potter enter and leave the Room of Requirement, and apparently they had surmised what the two of them had been doing and spread the rumors.

Severus leaned forwards. “Tell me, Draco,” he whispered hoarsely, “what does he look like in the midst of sex?”

Draco widened his eyes in a parody of innocence. “Longing to know so that you can compare the picture with your fantasies about his mother?” he asked.

Severus’s face stiffened, and he turned away with a dignity of conduct that Draco knew meant he was hiding deep shock. Well, let him hide it. Draco had better things to do than soothe a portrait’s hurt feelings, like make sure that the potion was completely back in the cauldron.

By the time that Potter stepped through the door, Draco had recovered himself. He inclined his head and picked up the cup of tea that he’d had one of the house-elves bring. At least the controversies over the running of Hogwarts hadn’t damaged the promptness and efficiency of the meals. “Tea, Potter?”

“Yes,” Potter said, and sat down in the chair across from him, sparing one quick glance at the frame on the wall that Dumbledore had sometimes appeared in.

Draco studied him narrowly as he held out the cup and Potter accepted it. Draco hadn’t tried to touch Potter’s fingers as they handed the cup across, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to avoid it, either. Potter simply didn’t touch them, and made it all look natural, to the point that Draco had no proof it wasn’t. He wanted to hiss between his teeth. Instead, he sat back and nodded to Potter, adopting a neutral expression. “You look like you’re simply bursting with news. What is it?”

Potter snorted a little and sipped at his tea. “Covington met me outside. She implied that I would be put into a position of power if I betrayed you to them.”

Draco felt a small shock go through him, but he wasn’t sure if it was the mention of Covington’s tactic or the fact that Potter had casually used the word “betraying,” as if he thought that it really _would_ be betrayal to turn Draco in. “I see. I hope you gave her no hints.”

Potter raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “I didn’t really need to, though,” he admitted. “She’d already made some extremely good guesses, including that we’d found whatever we’d gone into the lake to look for, and that I’d spoken to Dumbledore’s portrait. She also said that she knew I was keeping secrets from the Ministry, but since that was perfectly obvious from the time she met us on the lakeshore, I’m less inclined to give her credit for that.”

Draco frowned. “Could she have picked up the clue from your mind in any way? Is she a Legilimens?” He had sensed nothing of the kind during his private meetings with her, but then again, she might have known better than to try that weapon on a fellow Slytherin.

“I don’t think so,” Potter said. “I would probably recognize the touch of another mind on mine, for—many reasons, although I don’t think I could block it.”

“You are unexpectedly honest this morning, Potter,” Severus said caustically from behind Draco’s chair. “Does that have anything to do with your recent experience?”

Draco hissed, but Potter didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss. He looked up at Severus, and his eyes were simply blank. “What recent experience?”

And he sounded—normal. Perhaps a bit curious. It seemed he didn’t think Severus would have any reason or way to know that they’d slept together.

Draco cut in smoothly before Severus could go about revealing any clues he might have had in mind. “We’ll string her along and convince her that you’re interested but need more solid promises. It would be interesting to see what she would commit herself to. I’m not yet sure exactly how far she stands up in the Ministry, although I know her official title. Do you remember meeting her or hearing of her when you were with the Aurors?”

Potter shook his head. “I doubt I would have remembered if I did. I wasn’t much interested in politics until I found out what the Ministry intended to do to Hogwarts.” He leaned forwards. “I thought we were going to work on the riddle. Aren’t we? We can string her along, but it’s a distraction from the real task that we’re here to accomplish.”

Draco nodded, hoping that he masked his irritation, and then drew out the parchment with the riddle on it from his pocket. “I’ve considered it several times since yesterday, but I have to admit that I know of no creature which has four legs in reality and eight legs and two tails in legends. There are superstitious tales of all sorts that wizards believe, just like Muggles, but _we_ have the option of correcting them because of the research of people like Newt Scamander. The corrected version would have made its way into all the magical creature textbooks.”

Potter was giving him an odd look. Draco stared back. “What?” He would _not_ be the one to flush or stammer or make the first reference to the sex that sometimes still felt branded on his skin when he was incautious enough to think about it.

“I didn’t think you had much respect for people who studied magical creatures,” Potter said, shaking his head. “Considering the way you treated Hagrid.”

Draco sneered, and didn’t care if Potter saw it. Or at least he told himself that. “He couldn’t control the creatures that he wanted to study. He couldn’t protect his students. Someone who’s going to study beasts like that needs to care more about their students than about the beasts.”

Potter clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, and Draco half-hoped to see the flames that would mark his anger rise along his skin. At least that would prove he needed Draco, and that Draco had done _something_ for him, and perhaps he would invite Draco into his bed to do it again.

Only, this time, Draco might refuse, at least until he reached the point where Potter was writhing and begging in front of him.

“I won’t argue about that,” Potter said, opening his eyes. “But anyway, isn’t it at least _possible_ that some of the textbooks might print the old stories along with the corrected version? That way, we can find out what creatures were once believed to have eight legs and two tails, even if they don’t believe that now.”

“Don’t forget the other part of the riddle,” Draco said. He wasn’t anxious to go looking through old textbooks; he could imagine few things less exciting. “That part about not seeing it when you cross the sky with the sun.”

Potter grunted in annoyance. “That sounds as if it has something to do with Astronomy. I was never much good at that. Do you know what constellation it might be right away?”

“No,” Draco said. “And there’s no reason to assume that it’s a constellation. It could be a planet or a star. I don’t know of any constellation that’s visible all the time at both morning and evening.”

“Yeah.” Potter tugged at his hair. “Just to make it _even harder._ ” He looked up at Severus’s portrait, shaking his head. “You bastards were paranoid.”

“Not paranoid enough, in the end, to save my life.” Severus had a distracted tone in his voice, and Draco knew without turning around that he was squinting into the cauldron. But he would also be paying careful attention to the conversation, not allowing any of the words to escape his ears. Draco was certain that he would report every word to Dumbledore later, if not the other portraits. “I will not wish the protections on the riddles less to appease your childish desire for simplicity and clarity.”

“ _Listen_ , Snape—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Draco said, cutting across them both. “We should look for the solution to both parts of the riddle. I could possibly solve the second part—in fact, I think it’s probably Venus, which is sometimes called both the morning and the evening star—but we need the connection between the two parts. After all, even if the answer to the second part is Venus, what connection does that have to something with four legs or eight legs and two tails? I _know_ there are no legends of Venus like that.”

“How do you know?” Potter said, seemingly content to be distracted from his row with Severus.

“Because my mother made me study Astronomy as a child,” Draco said, with a little shudder. There had been one year when Narcissa was obsessed with it, giving him books of constellations to memorize at the same time as she was making him study the Black genealogy and compare the personalities of their ancestors with the star-names they’d been given. “I would have heard any stories like that of Venus, if they existed.”

Potter laughed. “I know the feeling. There was a time when we were looking up charms that I could use against dragons in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. By the end, I never wanted to know anything else about dragons.”

His face darkened suddenly, and Draco suspected he was remembering that he had been friends with Weasley and Granger in those days, and had spent his “studying” time in their private little circle. Draco spoke so that he would stop the hero’s plunge into brooding, which he thought neither relevant nor useful. “You would volunteer to look through the old Magical Creatures textbooks for some evidence of an animal with eight legs and two tails in the legends?”

Potter raised his eyebrows. “You want to avoid the chore enough to trust me with research?”

Draco wanted some breathing space from Potter, to be perfectly honest, but he would hardly be perfectly honest with someone who had regarded him only as the means to an end, the best of a bad lot. He raised his eyebrows back instead. “Do you want to stay here with me while I cudgel my brains for memories of Astronomy lessons?”

“When you put it like that, no.” Potter stood and held out his hand. “Let me make a copy of the riddle so that I can carry it with me.”

Draco sneered automatically. “You’re not capable of remembering it for the few hours that we’ll be apart?”

“I don’t always trust my memory,” Potter said, and nothing more.

Draco sighed and cast a Duplicator Charm on the small piece of parchment that held the riddle. He tried to toss the one he held to Potter, but Potter simply snatched it from his hand, nodded back, and then turned around and walked out the door as if he had no thought in his head but the research.

Draco watched him go for longer than was wise, given the way Severus cleared his throat behind him. “Trouble in lovers’ paradise?” he asked.

“Be still,” Draco said, and leaned back in his chair to shut his eyes. “I have to concentrate on the possible answers to this riddle, what mythological creatures are linked to Venus, and what they would have to do with a place on Hogwarts’ grounds. You can’t help me, since you admitted that you have no memory of the riddle or what drove your former self to write it.”

That silenced Severus, as Draco had known it would. And with his eyes shut and his inner world undisturbed, who was to know that he lingered for a short time over the events of yesterday before he began to pick his memories?

*

Harry grimaced and staggered towards the library table he’d chosen with another double armful of books on magical creatures. He hadn’t known that the library housed what seemed to be all the textbooks that had ever been used for the classes here. They also put, in the same space, any textbooks for other classes that were, for whatever reason, primarily devoted to magical creatures, like Potions textbooks that talked about their eggs, skin, and feathers.

And textbooks were almost the only kind of books in the library, Harry thought, with a final glance around before he settled himself in front of the pile. The shelves looked full because there were so many, but it hadn’t taken him long to notice that most other books—history books, general references, even the books on Quidditch—were gone.

 _Done by the Ministry for the safety of the students?_ Harry thought sarcastically as he flipped open the cover of the first book. That cover had no title, but the first page said, in bright and gleaming gilt letters, _The Hippogriff and Lesser Cousins,_ so at least he was on the right track. _Or because they want to sort through the books of the library and decide which ones should belong to the Ministry?_

Really, either alternative was plausible, and depressing enough that Harry decided he wasn’t going to think about it any longer. He did wonder that Hermione could support the Ministry in any way, though.

He cast the spell that would make this research a lot easier and settled back to wait. The charm made a cascade of shimmering pink light with golden flecks rise up over each book and form into a question mark. Then each question mark dissolved as the magic raced into the book, marking, with a big, easily visible card, each page that mentioned a specific word. In this case, Harry had chosen the word “eight,” since he thought “legs” and “tails” would be mentioned too often to matter.

While he waited, his mind drifted, and it went straight back to the place he should have suspected it was going. After all, Hermione had invented the spell he was using to search the books.

Harry rubbed his eyes and looked wearily at the shelves. He wondered sometimes whether it be worthwhile to reach out again and try to coax Hermione and Ron to reconcile with him. A day like this would be favorite, because he was still drained and calm from the sex with Malfoy and wouldn’t get angry at them as easily.

But then he thought again of the way they supported the Ministry, and shook his head. Why _should_ he care what they cared about? They hadn’t cared enough to stand by him when he was clearly in the right, and the Ministry was sacking him just for asking questions. They’d made their own compromises and come to their own solutions in the years that passed, without a single solitary attempt to contact him. They had a right to be hurt by what he’d said, Harry thought, but they didn’t seem to acknowledge his same right to be hurt by _their_ words.

 _Yeah, we’re probably destined to stay apart forever,_ Harry told himself, and then sat upright as the spell finished and the books glowed pink once before the final cards settled into place. _And I can’t believe how maudlin I’m becoming._

The books, as it turned out, weren’t any help. The only thing that appeared to have eight legs was a spider, and none of them had four legs in reality—even though Malfoy was wrong and a few of the textbooks did include old legends about creatures that the researchers hadn’t been able to verify, or stories about what people used to believe. Harry learned a lot about Acromantulas and more about deadly fire-brown spiders and white widows, but there was nothing in the whole pile that seemed likely to lead him on. He shut the last book with a bang that Madam Pince would have frowned at, if she was there, and stood up.

“Harry, my boy. I’ve wanted to talk to you since yesterday.”

Harry spun around with a yelp. He hadn’t even realized that an empty portrait frame hung behind him. Dumbledore stood in it now, his eyes so bright with hope that Harry winced. He knew what was coming.

“I don’t really have time, Headmaster,” he said, and began gathering up the books with a spell. He probably should have floated them to the table that way in the first place, he thought. Then he might have been out of here before Dumbledore arrived. But at first, he hadn’t known that all of these books really were about magical creatures. “Malfoy will be waiting for me to come back and tell him what I’ve discovered—”

“Which will be little enough, I’m afraid, having watched you,” Dumbledore said serenely. “Could I offer some advice, Harry? I speak as a friend, and you do not have to take this advice.”

Harry turned around and leaned against the table. “But are you my friend?” he asked quietly.

Dumbledore blinked and cleared his throat. He didn’t seem to have been expecting the question. “I would like to think that I am, Harry,” he said at last. “I don’t like to think that you would look on me as an enemy.”

Harry shook his head. He was remembering, or trying to, that this portrait wasn’t the man who had saved the world and very nearly damned Harry, but the portrait kept wanting to act as though it was. So maybe the best solution was to treat it that way. “Not an enemy. But—your plans worked. But they still involved me dying. That was something I had to think a long time about before I accepted it. Hermione still thinks I haven’t accepted it,” he added, and didn’t care about the twist of bitterness in his voice. Dumbledore knew, had to know, the tension of the situation with his friends, if not all the details. “I did. It was just complex, and I didn’t think I’d have to talk to you again.”

“I have been waiting for you all these years,” Dumbledore said. “I’d very much like to explain what I did.”

“But you already did,” Harry said, “when I died and met you in a place that looked like King’s Cross. That was the only explanation I need.”

Dumbledore gave him a keen look. “Would you not rather hear an explanation that exists outside your head?” he asked quietly. “From what I understood, you could not be sure of what happened there because you were dead at the time.”

“Have you been talking to Hermione?” Harry asked, and felt a return of the anger, like a rush of bile in the bottom of his throat, when Dumbledore nodded seriously.

“I felt as if it were the closest I could come to talking with you,” he said. “And I was lonely, longing to reestablish a bond of trust between us, but unable to do so as long as you avoided me. She was the one who told me that you thought you had seen me when you were dead, and were satisfied with the explanation that my ghost offered.”

“I am,” Harry said. “There’s no reason to drag this all up again. You aren’t Dumbledore, not completely, and you’ve said that you’re missing some of his memories. I want the full explanation, not the partial one.”

The portrait looked hurt. “I can offer you some of the friendship that existed between you and my former self, at least,” he said gently. “I had hoped that would be enough to build a deeper relationship between us.”

Harry shook his head. “I came to terms with Dumbledore’s death,” he said, and looked over his shoulder to make sure that the last book had floated off the table. Just as well not to let the Ministry know what they were researching. “I don’t need a reflection of him to offer me reassurances. Really, sir,” he added when he saw that the portrait had opened its painted mouth again. “It’s all over and done with. I don’t want to talk about it again.”

“You must, for your own health,” Dumbledore said. “I do not think that you can have passed through the traumatic events that took place in your life and be psychologically normal.”

Harry laughed hollowly. “You think normality should be the goal? I think I should be grateful that I’m still breathing and sane.”

“Your sanity remains in doubt for a few of your closest friends.” Dumbledore was peering at him over the top of his spectacles now, and his eyes were bright but grim. “I must admit my doubts join with theirs.”

Harry snorted. He still felt less anger than he should have in the face of an accusation like that. Malfoy really had been good for him, he thought with some surprise.

Or not Malfoy, but being bound. Harry knew he would pay a price if he forgot the distinction between those two things.

“What exactly did you _expect_ me to be like, after the war?” he asked. “Did you think that I’d wake up the next morning, shrug, say, ‘Well, glad that’s over,’ and then become an Auror and stay one, and marry Ginny Weasley and have a ton of children? Or did you want me to go through years of therapy and come to some profound revelation at the end of it? Hermione sounds like that’s her preferred option. But I can’t do both at the same time. I’m not normal, I won’t be, and it’s time to accept that.”

Dumbledore shook his head. “I wished to see more of a reaction,” he said quietly. “I wished to see you reconciled with the wizarding world. I wished to see you have the life you would have had without your parents’ death and without the scar on your forehead.”

Harry stared at him. “But that’s _stupid_ ,” he finally said, since there was no kinder way to put it. “I can’t—look, I can’t just roll over and accept the blows that life has given me and get up from them. That requires a fantasy hero, and I thought that you—I mean, the man you used to be—always knew I wasn’t that. I’m _me_. Flawed and normal. Why does everyone have a hard time accepting that? Or else they think I’m too flawed, like Hermione, and need some kind of correction.”

Dumbledore sighed. “Perhaps it was an unrealistic fantasy,” he agreed. “But you cannot pretend that the life you have now is the life of your choice, Harry.”

“It’s a lot better than the life I would have had if Hermione got her way,” Harry said frankly. “I’d be pretending to happiness. I’d be pretending that nothing had ever happened to me, which is stupid. I’d be pretending to be normal sexually, for that matter. It’s all a matter of chance. I can’t make something be real by wishing it was.”

Dumbledore simply watched him solemnly. Just when Harry thought he wasn’t going to speak any more and was about to walk out of the library, Dumbledore whispered, “I wish it for you anyway.”

“Stop wishing,” Harry snapped. “If you’re concerned about what I want, then knowing this _isn’t_ what I want should be enough to make you stop wishing.”

Dumbledore started to say something else, but this time Harry really had had enough. He made his way quickly to the dungeons, hoping that Malfoy had had better luck than he had.

*

Draco could have wished that his mind wandered less often to images of Potter’s eyes wide open and blazing beneath him, and the texture of warm limbs and arse clenching around him in desire, or the expression of sheer _surprise_ on his face when Draco had slid into him for the first time.

But it probably wouldn’t have made any difference if he had thought solely of Venus for the hours before Potter came back, he considered, opening his eyes at the click of the door. If there were any legends about Venus being associated with magical creatures like the ones the riddle described, his mother had never insisted that he learn them.

“Nothing,” Potter said, slumping into a chair in front of Draco’s fire as though he had been walking for miles instead of simply studying books in a library. “I used a spell that brought every occurrence of the word ‘eight’ in all the books to my attention. It didn’t work.” He glanced at Draco and smiled a little grimly. “But I could tell you a whole lot about spiders, if you have some reason to want to know about them.”

Draco felt a flash of heat pass across him at the image of those eyes. He rose from his chair as if casually. Potter had already turned back to the fire, so Draco didn’t really fear Potter would notice his half-erection, but he had thought of something else he could do.

He paced behind Potter’s chair. “I can remember nothing that would mark out Venus as being associated with magical creatures, either,” he admitted. His hand fell on Potter’s neck and clamped down.

Potter tensed—Draco could feel that through the tremble in his muscles as well as see it—but his voice remained light. “Well, then we’ll have to try something else. Maybe look at the riddle again? Maybe you’ll find a clue in the wording, the way that you did when thinking about the difference between ‘stop’ and ‘end’ in the first riddle.”

Draco pressed down more heavily, to the point that he was almost bending Potter’s head forwards, and stooped to put his lips to Potter’s ear. “Why don’t we do something else for a while?” he murmured. “A short break could prove helpful and refreshing to our minds. As well as our bodies.” He let his other hand stray down Potter’s chest.

Potter caught his hand. Draco felt another flash of heat and worked hard not to pant—

Until the point when Potter squeezed his fingers so hard that flashes of red and black across Draco’s vision replaced the flash of heat.

“Potter, what the _fuck_?” he said, concentrating despite his dizziness so that he could rip his hand free of Potter’s hold. He leaped back and stood staring in confusion at the idiot in front of him. 

Potter took his time sitting there and breathing, almost long enough for the tingling to fade from Draco’s fingers. Then he rose from the chair and turned.

His eyes were close to black with rage. Draco looked instinctively for some sign of the green flames or the other things Potter did that would signal his magic getting out of control, but none of them appeared. He thought he understood why when he looked back at Potter’s face. This wasn’t the uncontrollable fury Potter had shown before, but simple outrage.

 _As though I did him an indignity,_ Draco thought, his heart thumping hard and anger of his own replacing his shock. _As if he thought I somehow wasn’t worthy to sleep with him._

“You don’t understand,” Potter said. “I only do— _that_ —when I need something to control my anger. We did it yesterday, and one good session is enough to sustain me for a couple of months. So I’m not in need of any attentions that you might spare me right now, Malfoy.” His lips had drawn back from his teeth in a way that made him look as if he might bite—and, stupidly, only made Draco want him more.

Of course, he wanted Potter bound in a bed, where he would be earning the risk if he brought his hand near Potter’s teeth. Being assaulted when he’d taken no risk displeased him.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “That you only need to be bound to the bed and fucked when you’re angry?” It sounded incredible to him, but he supposed that might be why it had been a subject of such bitter disagreement between Potter and his friends. He and they both saw it as a nonessential part of himself, or at least not as part of him all the time.

“Exactly,” Potter said, voice cool. “It’s a last resort, the only thing that works, but that doesn’t mean I want it all the time. I don’t _enjoy_ it.”

Draco snorted.

Potter flushed in a beautiful way, the red creeping up his face from his shirt collar and gratifying Draco with the extra embarrassment he seemed to feel because he was flushing. “Shut it, Malfoy,” Potter muttered. “I don’t mean—there’s a difference between physical and mental enjoyment. You’ve never noticed that?”

He was sneering again, and Draco felt able to meet him eye to eye and say, “It was physical enjoyment when you came. You didn’t want me to touch you. You came because of _me_ , because I was inside you, shoving deeper and deeper.”

His voice grew husky in spite of himself and he knew he was stiffening in his pants, but nevertheless, he didn’t regret that he’d used the words. It was worth it for the way that Potter shifted and looked aside.

“I don’t want what you can offer me, Malfoy,” he said, “which is a few days of commitment at the most. We’re here to solve a problem, and we’re bloody well going to solve it without taking out time for fucking along the way.”

Draco took a step closer and arched his body, letting Potter see his hard cock, his muscled forearms, his heated eyes. “Tell me that it would be only a fuck. Tell me that you didn’t dream about this last night.”

“I didn’t dream about this last night,” Potter said, and he looked sincere, as well as puzzled that Draco would want him to say anything else. Perhaps there was even a trace of pity in his expression that those dreams had plagued Draco. That impression came home full-force when Potter added, “I’m sorry if you did.”

Draco turned away, biting the inside of his cheek savagely to contain his disappointment and humiliation. He had sworn that he would never offer himself to someone who didn’t want him again, and that promise had seemed possible to keep when he was in the middle of the situation with Potter. But outside that, Potter apparently felt free to deny him.

“We have to solve this riddle and find the keys to unlock the wards,” Potter said, in a condescending tone. “Don’t you think that’s more important than coming, Malfoy?”

Draco turned back around. He knew the tactic to use now. If he was injured, the best thing to do was injure in return. “Of course,” he said. “At least for someone like you, who’s so repressed he probably only wanks once a year.”

Potter’s nostrils flared, and he rose to the bait. “It has nothing to do with that! I told you, this isn’t _normal_ for me. I did try to discourage you from doing anything to me, remember. You were the one who demanded that I choose you.”

“You’re the one who felt better the instant those chains were around your ankles,” Draco retorted. “I saw your face, remember? You couldn’t have lied. You were relaxed and tossing your head, hard and moaning for _me_. And you dare act as though you can put all that behind you the minute you’re out of the bedroom?”

“Yes.” Potter looked furious and conflicted, but still without that driving edge to his anger that Draco was familiar with by now. “Because that’s something I only need sometimes, I told you, like a—like a medical potion. My normal sexual response is completely different. I can fuck in different positions at other times.”

Draco leaned back against the wall and waited until he was sure Potter wasn’t going to say anything more, but face him, panting and irritated and beautiful. Then he raised one eyebrow and said, “I see Granger and Weasley have got to you after all.”

Potter went still, his eyes fixing on Draco. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “Tell me what you mean by that.”

“They think there’s something pathological about you, something wrong with your sexuality,” Draco said. “And you insist there’s not, but the minute your needs are fulfilled, you act ashamed of it. You won’t speak of it openly. You won’t admit you need it except at certain specific times. You won’t even admit that you _enjoy_ it. They’ve got to you. You’re ashamed.”

Potter’s hands clenched, but still the flames didn’t shimmer around his fingers. Draco was beginning to wish that he hadn’t done quite such a good job of fucking Potter’s demons out of him last night, if this was the result. “I am not,” Potter said between locked teeth. “I simply don’t see the need to _talk_ about it, or do it again until I need to. Tell me, Malfoy, if we were really lovers, wouldn’t you want me to be normal?”

“There you go again, using words like ‘normal’ that wouldn’t matter to you if you’d accepted yourself as fully as you’ve told Granger and Weasley,” Draco said. He shook his head sadly and then locked his eyes on Potter’s, so that he didn’t have the chance to turn away. “If we were really lovers, I would want you to be yourself, as hard as you can.”

Potter’s lips parted, and his eyes flamed. Draco thought he was trembling on the edge of something in that moment, and the something might have been a step towards Draco. Draco tried to make his expression as welcoming as possible.

But then Potter turned his eyes away and shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense for you to say something like that,” he said. “And I didn’t come here to find someone like you. I came to solve the riddles.”

“For no other reason?” Draco murmured. He wouldn’t let the moment go until Potter pried it away from him. It had been _too_ close to what happened between them last night, giving him such a clear glimpse that he longed for it now and wouldn’t be satisfied until it was brought into existence. “I hardly thought you likely someone to come and go at the behest of the Ministry.”

Potter’s gaze snapped to him. Draco didn’t see the anger in it, still, but the clear, uncertain curiosity he had felt himself this morning, when he couldn’t stop thinking of Potter. He smiled, because he couldn’t help it.

Potter turned his back decisively. “We should think about the last line of the riddle, too,” he said, as if their discussion had never happened. “ _Look unto the last._ What’s the last, and what does it have to do with Venus or magical creatures?”

Draco bit the heel of his hand in frustration. But he would not show the emotions if Potter wouldn’t. He was not going to be Potter’s servant or the conduit for the recovery of his sexuality. Potter would have to do that himself if he was going to do it at all.

He could mourn the chance lost and gone, however. That was something Potter would probably be incapable of doing even if he was refusing Draco for a rational reason.

He stepped up beside Potter and bent over his shoulder, taking a petty pleasure in the way that Potter shuffled when he felt Draco’s warm breath on his ear. “I don’t know what it means,” he murmured. “The prior riddle? The riddle that led us to the lake was obviously meant to be solved before this one, since it hid the bubble that held this one. Or perhaps the location? We might learn something if we go out to the lake.”

As Draco had thought he would, Potter snatched eagerly at the suggestion, stepping away from him and striding to the door of Severus’s room. “Let’s do that. At least few people should be out there now, and Hermione will stay away from us because I filled her mouth with metal.” He made a complicated sound that Draco thought was not a snicker.

Draco started to follow him, but Severus cleared his throat first. Draco looked up and caught the portrait’s sardonic gaze.

Draco flushed. He could read what Severus was suggesting or saying well despite the silence. Was the knowledge he had gained by listening at the door worth it? Was sleeping with Potter worth it, when Potter remained Potter despite all that had passed between them, holding on to ideals of normality?

The only answer Draco could offer before he followed Potter was a shrug. He didn’t know whether it had been worth it, and that was the only honest answer he could give.

*

 

Harry stood on the bank of the lake, concentrating fiercely on the water. It was late in the afternoon now, and the stars would be coming out soon. Perhaps the reflection of Venus in the water, if it shone at all, would tell them something.

Malfoy stood beside him. He didn’t move the way Harry did, when he had to ease the weight on his feet or an ache in his side that had formed with standing for too long. He could give his attention to a single object and then cease to exist in the contemplation of that object. Harry remembered him being like that in Potions at Hogwarts, too, where he would earn better marks than almost anyone in the class because he could _fixate—_

Harry yanked his gaze away, flushing, and then turned to kick a small pebble into the lake. The ripples that broke the surface passed in front of Malfoy’s eyes, but he gave no sign that he noticed.

Harry clenched his fists. He couldn’t have said why Malfoy bothered him so much, except that Harry had assumed they had an understanding about the incident yesterday and wouldn’t mention it again. He had been happy not thinking of it or reverting to it until Malfoy brought us up.

 _And why did he do that?_ Harry sneaked another glance. Malfoy had remained in the same posture for twenty minutes now, but he didn’t look stiff or bored. _He must know that us being together in any way is impossible._

Of course, Harry hastily reminded himself, Malfoy had given no indication that he wanted _that_. He simply wanted to fuck Harry again, to assert his authority. It wasn’t surprising. That way, he could have control of the partnership, too.

He probably assumed that he would get sole credit for discovering the secret of the riddles in the press, if he played his cards right.

Harry grimaced. _He can have it, as far as I’m concerned. Not that I care enough to tell him that._ He gave another sideways look at Malfoy, who had started frowning as though he assumed the answer would rise from the lake if he just scowled hard enough. _He ought to know I like my privacy by now._

The thought would probably have led him into another gloomy round of speculations and castigations to himself for being stupid enough to trust Malfoy in the first place, but suddenly Malfoy took a step back and laughed.

Harry tensed instinctively at the laughter. Deep, ringing, loud, joyous—it wasn’t the sort of sound he associated with Malfoy at all, let alone at a time when they were both baffled and had had a frustrating row earlier. Well, more frustrating for Malfoy than for Harry, at any rate. That was something to take comfort in.

 _Maybe he’s finally gone off his nut,_ Harry decided, wondering if that would be good for Harry himself or not. Well, if it coordinated with a tendency to forget intense sexual experiences, it would be. “Malfoy?” he asked cautiously.

“I was ignoring certain parts of the riddle,” Malfoy said, and turned to him with a wide grin that made Harry shudder. Ron had grinned like that when he thought he had a brilliant solution to the conflict between Harry and the Ministry over Hogwarts: that Harry should become a teacher there. “The last line is the most important. Why would it be isolated from the rest and in a different case if it wasn’t?”

“All right,” Harry said. “But what does it _mean_?”

Malfoy seized the riddle parchment from his pocket and twisted it around to show to Harry. “The last,” he said triumphantly. “We have to look at the last. The last _word_ , Potter, don’t you see? And the last word is _beauty._ ”

Harry could see that, even from the insane angle Malfoy was holding the riddle at, as if he expected Harry to read it with his head on one side like a bird. “I can see. So what?”

Malfoy laughed again and then reached out, grabbed a quill and an inkwell from what seemed thin air but must have been the depths of his sleeves, and began to scribble on the back of the parchment. Harry stepped around him to see and tried to ignore the sensation of warmth that blazed up at him through Malfoy’s robes. It wasn’t as though he _had_ to touch him.

Unless he wanted to.

Harry held his breath for a moment until Malfoy was finished, so that his chest wouldn’t accidentally touch Malfoy’s back. They brushed shoulders anyway when Malfoy turned and held out the parchment to him. Harry flushed and tried to focus on the letters.

It simply looked as though Malfoy had rewritten the word _BEAUTY_ , though with the first three vowels more widely spaced apart from the consonants surrounding them. _E A U_ said the paper, and still Harry didn’t see what was supposed to be so special about that. He gave Malfoy a look that he knew was full of baffled incomprehension.

Malfoy sighed, rolled his eyes, and turned the parchment over. “We mistook the meaning of the word _legend_ in the second line,” he said, stabbing the riddle with one finger. “A legend can be a story, sure.” He paused triumphantly. “It can also mean a piece of writing.”

Harry blinked. “And that, combined with the letters in the word ‘beauty,’ tells you what?”

Malfoy laughed. “There’s only one creature that walks on four legs in the world around us and on eight legs—the eight legs of letters—and two tails—the tails of curved letters—in our writing, as well as having those three vowels in the same order as the word beauty.” He turned the parchment over and copied out another word, in capital letters this time, then once again held it out to Harry.

_CENTAUR._

Harry did want to smack himself in the forehead with one hand when he saw that Malfoy had explained it that way. “So the clue to the riddle is going to be in the Forbidden Forest,” he said. “All right. But where? Are we supposed to go and ask the centaurs to please give up whatever it was that Dumbledore and Snape asked them to hide?”

Malfoy flipped the parchment again and tapped the third line. “We should have paid more attention to everything about this riddle, and that includes the third line. ‘ _Cross_ the sky.’ Wherever Venus appears to set, or rise, in the Forbidden Forest is the place we want.”

“But doesn’t that change with the seasons, or something?” Long-ago memories of Astronomy were struggling to surface in Harry’s mind. He rubbed his head and wished that thinking didn’t have to be so painful.

 _There’s a joke in that that Malfoy or Hermione would find,_ he decided, and then decided that he also wasn’t going to think about that anymore. He had enough to deal with, given the condescending look that Malfoy had just tossed him.

“I can still make the necessary calculations,” Malfoy said, waving a hand. “And the centaurs are doubtless included in the riddle because we’ll have to fight one to get the clue free. Like I said, we should have paid attention to the whole riddle. It’s one integrated unit, no matter how strange it might seem.”

Harry nodded. Then he paused, his mind flickering back to something that he might have put more importance on at the time if he had been thinking about the riddles then.

“I think I might know where we need to go,” he said slowly.

*

Draco had been proud of his brilliance earlier that afternoon. He had stood by the lake, and the answers had seemed to rise from the bottom of his mind like fish rising from the water, conveying the obvious question: why couldn’t “the last” refer to the last word on the parchment? It was as likely as anything else, and the different forms of the letters—capital in most of the riddle, lower-case in that last line—was a clue that it would have something to do with writing.

Now that he was trudging through the Forbidden Forest behind Potter, who swatted branches out of the way as if he did this for a living, he was more dissatisfied with himself, and he couldn’t stop thinking about why.

Potter had still been the one to come up with the place that they would need to visit. When he had explained about the white centaur and the blackened clearing, Draco had to agree that it was worth taking a look at.

But why should the solution depend, yet again, on those sudden skips of Potter’s unaided and inexplicable intuition, rather than on Draco’s subtle and brilliant calculations with the Astronomical instruments, as he thought it should?

Of course, he could have refused to visit the clearing and insisted that Potter let him make the calculations. But he knew Potter would have set out on his own, and he did think that Potter’s conclusion was right, much as he didn’t want to think that.

And had Potter praised him for his brilliance, asked him how he achieved the answer to the second riddle, or looked at him with the adoration that Draco had seen in his vision in the lake?

He had not.

He kicked a stone in front of him, and it went rolling away and rebounded from the trunk of a tree with a ringing sound that shouldn’t have traveled so far through the Forest, Draco thought, wincing. Then again, there was no reason for the laws of nature in the Forbidden Forest to be the same as those elsewhere.

Potter whirled around and stared at him. “Is something the matter?” he asked, his eyes searching past Draco’s shoulder for Merlin knew what danger.

Draco shook his head and gestured Potter curtly to go on. Potter raised an eyebrow and did so.

The raised eyebrow stayed with Draco, and so did the doubtful expression on Potter’s face. It looked as though he thought Draco was irrational or stupid, but he was too polite to say so. _Draco_ was the one who should be feeling that, after the way that Potter had repudiated his offer this morning.

Potter halted and lifted one cautious hand. Draco peered in front of him, but could see no lessening of the trunks. “What’s the matter?” he whispered irritably. “We obviously aren’t in the clearing yet.”

“Obviously,” Potter snapped back. “But I thought I heard hoofbeats.”

Draco drew his wand in silence, keeping his eyes on the trees around him while straining his own ears. Nothing happened, and the silence seemed to grow thicker and stronger the longer he listened. He let his gaze come back to Potter and raised an eyebrow of his own.

“I did hear them,” Potter said. He didn’t look inclined to doubt himself because Draco did. That irritated Draco, primarily because he had been looking forwards to watching Potter flounder around in circles. “And we’re close enough to the clearing now that there could be centaurs about, if not the one we want.” He gestured to the burned footsteps on the forest floor, the trail of marks he’d caused with his magical flames a few days ago, and which had led them this far. “These are more frequent now. I know that I was shedding more and more magic—”

“And destroying more and more of the Forest,” Draco felt compelled to add.

Potter scowled at him again. “The closer I got to the clearing,” he finished determinedly. “It _has_ to be close. That white centaur acted like he was guarding something. I know he was.”

Draco decided not to say that, in his opinion, Potter hadn’t thought that at the time and had simply added the detail to his memory later based on his new hope. It cost him nothing to remain calm and still and listen.

And yes, there was the soft sound of a foot disturbing the leaf mold not far from them. It might have been a human foot, but this far out in the Forest, Draco thought it significantly more likely to be a magical creature. He turned to face it and raised his voice. “If you guard the secret that Professors Snape and Dumbledore wanted you to hide, we’ve come to claim it from you.”

Potter grabbed his arm roughly, which wasn’t exactly the kind of skin-to-skin contact Draco had been craving, but at least was contact. “Malfoy, what you are doing?” he whispered harshly into Draco’s ear.

“Using my time wisely,” Draco said, and walked a few steps closer to the rustling noise. “Are you coming out?”

There was a pause, which Draco thought their opponent was trying and failing to make dramatic, and then a white centaur emerged through the gap in the nearest line of trees, stopping there so that he was framed by the branches. He was taller than most centaurs Draco had seen, with flowing hair and a beard that could have rivaled Dumbledore’s. He scraped his left forehoof on the ground, producing the rustling sound they had heard before, and then inclined his head.

“You are brave to venture this far into the Forest when the sun is falling,” he said. “Come and fight me.”

Draco hesitated, trying to figure out the trap in this. The water-snakes had been a surprise, attacking without warning, and he had assumed that all their other challenges would be the same way. A straightforward invitation to fight wasn’t something he had expected.

“Not as brave as that,” the centaur remarked. “It seems that your courage needs more reinforcement from your common sense. You should have come earlier.” He took a bow and quiver of arrows from nowhere, or so it seemed, so neatly did his hands move, and was stringing an arrow before Draco thought about it.

Potter raised a Shield Charm in front of them and then stepped towards the centaur. His eyes were wild, a slight smile tugging at his lips, and Draco thought he glimpsed the man who had been both hero and Auror in his time, and had become someone who needed bonds to control him. “I’ll fight with you,” he said. “No reason to involve Malfoy in it.”

“You should,” the centaur said. “He understands more of darkness than you do.” And he shot.

The arrow passed through Potter’s Shield Charm as if it were mist and straight into his shoulder. Potter, the expressions of surprise and agony warring on his face, grabbed the arrow shaft and hissed in pain. Then he sank to the forest floor, while keeping an eye on the centaur and holding up his wand in a shaking hand.

Draco watched blood well up from the wound in dark droplets before he truly absorbed what had happened.

He whirled around and lifted his wand in turn, only to find that the centaur had disappeared. A soft rustling sound behind him made him duck frantically, and the second arrow swished overhead. Draco turned his head automatically to track it, but it had vanished instead of lodging in a tree the way he expected.

“This kind of arrow is meant to stir up the darkness in living flesh,” the centaur said, in the tone of someone giving an Astronomy lesson, and then Draco heard the singing hum of the bow bending beneath the weight of another arrow. “Perhaps you should look at your companion if you wish to learn what will happen then.”

Draco really wanted to keep his eyes on the centaur, provided he could find him again, but the words seemed to grab his face and turn it so that he was looking at Potter.

Or, rather, the writhing blot of darkness where Potter had been.

*

_They are coming back again._

The cool voice seemed to speak in Harry’s head a moment before all the evil in him leaped up through the barriers he had thought were containing it.

There was a spitting, splitting noise, and Harry found himself tumbled through his hatred and resentment of Dumbledore and Snape when he had first thought in any detail about what they had done and planned to do to him, and his willingness to leave the piece of Voldemort’s soul lying right there in King’s Cross, and the killing anger he had felt after the war when the Ministry tried to condemn innocent people to death—combined with his secret wish that some of them _could_ be condemned, that he didn’t have to fight for those who would have been willing to watch him die.

Here was the darkness that had led him to use Unforgivable Curses casually by the end of the war, and which had wanted him to use it again when he faced the Carrows across a courtroom.

Here was the vicious pleasure that had exploded inside of him when he watched Molly Weasley kill Bellatrix Lestrange—so vicious that he hadn’t even recognized the emotion until he thought about it later.

Here was the mixture of rage and despair that had drowned him when he realized the Auror program would never treat him like simply another trainee, that he was and would forever be someone’s villain or someone’s hero.

Here was the frustration that had assaulted him when he realized that he would lose the struggle against the Ministry to keep Hogwarts free—inevitably lose it, because there was no way that he could succeed. 

And there, perhaps deepest of all, was the drowning pool of disgust that swallowed him whenever his sanity outweighed his need and he had to confront being bound to the bed and fucked by a stranger just to keep from burning down the buildings around him.

He was coated with contempt, filled with his crimes, diminished by his constant attempts to rise above them, because the attempts always failed. The anger rose that might consume him if he let it.

With the anger came the magic.

Harry opened his eyes and found his vision consumed by filth whichever direction he looked in. His body was running, dripping with it, bleeding bloody tar. His hands were stained with it; they would never be clean. Fire ran with the slime and scarred the forest floor, digging down, bruising and battering and burning the earth.

A voice was calling, or might be calling, or could be calling, to him outside the magic and the whirl of fire. Harry refused to see why he should listen. There was nothing he could do but try to hold back the fire as long as he still had the power to do so. He tried to wrap the familiar barriers around himself, thinking of what he _could_ do when he found someone who would gratify him—

And the disgust met him head-on. Who was he that he should _need_ that? Ron and Hermione were right. It was abnormal, he had no reason for such a thing except the darkest possible hang-ups resulting from his abuse and Dumbledore’s manipulation, and he hadn’t even suffered that much or lost that many people in the war, compared to some people. Why did he react so strongly to mental wounds that chains were the only things that could compensate?

His chest was heaving. Murder and war and revolt ran wild in his veins. 

He fell back into the darkness, the barriers breaking apart as they tried to emerge, and he was lost to the voice.

*

Draco, still dodging the arrows, spoke Potter’s first name and then his last name over and over again, in a steady and calm voice, and never looked away from him. Despite what the centaur had said, he thought that Potter might have the chance to catch hold of Draco’s words and rise from the fountain of dirt that seemed to be devouring him. They had shared an intimate encounter in which Draco’s voice could command him, after all.

But the darkness remained, and Draco decided that he could do nothing for Potter at the moment. He would have to stop the centaur and his arrows first.

He already knew Shield Charms wouldn’t work. He wondered, though, if something more unorthodox, more daring, would. He began to smile as he considered it, and the centaur noticed.

“You cannot fight me,” he said, gently, mournfully. “They hid the secret with me, in light, and I am the light that searches out the depths of your soul. I bring the secrets to the surface, the buried things, and you cannot face them.”

Draco tossed his head back and dropped the shields he had been beginning to brew. He faced the centaur, naked of anything except his wand, which swept back and forth in front of him, low and parallel to the ground. The centaur paused, scraping a hoof on the earth and studying him carefully.

“Strike at me,” Draco said quietly. “You might find more than you expected.”

The centaur moved with flowing speed, stringing and shooting the arrow so quickly that Draco began to think his earlier escapes had been luck. The arrow whistled across the distance between them and struck him in the shoulder. The darkness sank into him and began to rise from within him at the same time.

Draco shut his eyes and confronted the darkness with his utter lack of barriers.

The arrow sent poison into him, seeking to free the hidden poisons he had filled himself with. And it could find nothing that Draco had not already confronted and alchemized as part of himself, no place where he had not already been.

Draco had struggled with other things than becoming a Potions master in the years after the war. He had struggled with his shame and frustration over not doing something glorious when it seemed every other student at Hogwarts was a war hero. He had struggled with the fact that he hadn’t actually saved his parents, and that he’d been stupid enough to believe Voldemort in the first place when he said Draco could. He had struggled with the memory of Severus, the jealousy he felt when other people did better than he did, the heart-gnawing rage he still experienced when he saw Potter’s picture in the paper. He struggled with the fact that his name was tarnished and would be for generations.

All that he’d been raised to believe he would have and would serve had been destroyed. The Dark Lord was a shadow and a lie. His parents had played no more glorious part than saving Harry Potter’s life when the Dark Lord believed he was dead—something that changed the course of the war, yes, but not the kind of blazing deed performed before dozens of witnesses, and not something that anyone outside a small, select group of people would even believe had happened. Draco wasn’t a Malfoy, heir to an astonishing legacy. He was an eighteen-year-old in a world that didn’t want him.

All of that he had faced. All of that he had conquered or subdued or learned to live with. He had made vows that embraced the future rather than the past, such as the one about never sleeping with someone who didn’t want him. 

He was not without flaw, but he was without self-deception. He faced those things Severus and his parents and the world had taught them and made the wounds his sign of strength. And the thoughts that would have terrified other people, of becoming too powerful or hurting his enemies or performing the Dark Arts, were his secret dreams at night.

He embraced the darkness, and the light of the centaur’s arrow found no fear of it in him.

He opened his eyes and saw that the centaur had backed away from him. His white coat was luminescent, and his hoof continued to stamp and scrape, but it sent sparks up now. He had no bow or arrows any longer.

“I had not thought a Dark wizard would come here,” he whispered. He grew brighter and brighter, until Draco had to squint and blink to see him. “I surrender.”

He tossed something that Draco caught without thinking about it, only remembering later that the centaur was an enemy and this could have been anything from a weapon to poison. But it turned out to be a large globe made of some material like flexible glass, though not quite as transparent. Looking into it, Draco could make out two twists of parchment.

When he looked up, the centaur was fading into the last of the sunlight.

“How do I heal Potter?” Draco shouted after him.

“The infection of my arrow cannot be healed, only contained,” came the voice of a whispering ghost, “unless the one touched by it faces and accepts his demons.”

Draco cursed and raced across the clearing to kneel beside Potter as the centaur faded completely into the flood of sunlight. Of course the one thing that could stop this infection would be the one thing that Potter was unlikely to do.

He clamped his hands into place on Potter’s neck and shoulders, hoping that pain and restraint might do what words alone could not do, and then spent a few moments composing himself, trying to ignore the dark flood of fire and filth that poured over his hands. When he spoke, his voice had the light, cool tone he had used when giving orders to Potter in the Room of Requirement. “Come back.”

*

He was drowning. Ron and Hermione had been right. Dumbledore had been manipulative. He had not lost much in the war against Voldemort, some people had lost their families or their lives, Teddy had lost his _parents_ , why was he so angry? He should be sane, and he wasn’t. He should be happy, and he wasn’t. He should have a family, and he didn’t.

There was no end to the accusations, and no method by which he could cope with or handle them. He was going to drown, and he thought that he might as well let it happen.

Then a voice called out above him, giving him an order, a directive, to obey. “Come back.”

Harry paused, gasping. The dirt stopped flowing out of him and allowed him to hang motionless in the middle of it, spinning in place and staring up at the surface, from which the glittering thread of hope had descended.

The thread was there, was real, and the voice that said, “Come back,” giving him no option to escape from it, was Malfoy’s.

Harry closed his eyes. How could he sleep with Malfoy again, knowing what he knew about himself?

But the voice didn’t say that he had to do that, or even be bound. It said simply that he had to come back. And to do that, Harry had to build barriers that would put the secrets back into their places and protect them the way they had been protected beforehand.

“Come back,” the voice said. It didn’t say how. That was up to him to figure out.

Harry extended his hands to either side and seized two squirming handfuls of the blackness. He stuffed them back down and into himself, preventing them from escaping as they wanted. He then grabbed the whirling thoughts and stuffed them down. Yes, he was selfish and horrible and twisted and sick and a waste of human life, but he would have to think about that _after_ he had reached the point where he could open his eyes and see Malfoy’s face.

Again and again the order thrummed in his ears, and again and again it gave him strength, as nothing else could have, to struggle against the darkness and tell it to learn its place, that it was not the whole of him and could not consume the whole of his will.

That was wrong. He was sick and twisted, and he should have learned some other way to cope with his problems. His friends’ voices chattered in his ears, and Hermione’s face glowed with tears, and there was no solution.

But there could be a solution _later_ , after Harry had escaped from the immediate problem that no solution would fix. He flung himself into that, and the void groaned around him and responded. It became not a void, but stuffed with flesh, choked with bitterness, filled with evil. Yes, it was still there, yes, it was horrible, and yes, Harry thought that anyone who looked at him had to be disgusted. But the point was that it _stayed_ there and allowed him to come closer and closer to what else he needed to do.

He opened his eyes, and saw Malfoy’s face above him.

*

Draco would not have admitted how relieved he was when the darkness stopped flowing across his hands and the last of the stain became intangible and fell away. But Potter’s eyes still showed no sense, so he kept repeating his words until they snapped open and were staring at him, lit with a darkness that was only human, that of pupil and iris.

“Malfoy.” Potter’s voice was hoarse and harsh. He sounded as if he’d been screaming for hours. Draco reckoned that it was possible he had, somewhere deep inside and far away where Draco couldn’t have heard him. Potter cleared his throat and sat up, shaking his head as if he assumed that he still had slime to clear from his hair. He glanced at the bubble in Draco’s hand. “That’s the riddle?”

“And the keyword that will unlock the wards,” Draco said, watching him carefully. He would take his cue from Potter, he thought, and react as he reacted.

“We should get out of here,” Potter said. “It’ll be dark soon.”

Draco frowned. Taking his cue from Potter had not meant being confronted by a senseless mask of flesh that refused to acknowledge anything of what had happened between them.

He stayed silent, however, until they reached the eaves of the Forest and Potter leaned against the nearest trunk with a gasp, closing his eyes. Then Draco stepped up beside him and murmured, “The centaur said that his infection couldn’t be healed, only contained, until you faced your demons.”

Potter spoke without looking at him. “And I contained it.” He hesitated, then added, “I might not come by tomorrow. I’ll have to seek someone out who can help me contain this more than I have so far.”

Draco drove his nails into Potter’s shoulder. Potter sagged towards him, then seemed to realize what he was doing and straightened up.

“Why do so?” Draco whispered against his ear. “When I’m willing and ready to help you with that?”

“Because this has nothing to do with anger,” Potter said. “And some of the things I learned when the arrow hit me have changed my mind about what we did yesterday. The chains, though, can be conjured or made by a skilled locksmith. I’ll find someone.” He stepped away from Draco.

Draco pinched harder with his nails. “You’re being ridiculous,” he said. “And endangering more than just your own life, by giving me a partner who might go into battle still suffering from a magical infection.”

“I promise you that won’t happen,” Potter said, and broke away, striding rapidly down the road towards Hogsmeade.

Draco closed his eyes and stood there in anger of his own as profound, he thought, as anything Potter suffered from, although it didn’t produce flames racing up and down his body.

Severus, he thought when he looked at Potter’s distant shape, would have laughed.


	6. The Room of Lost Things

Hogsmeade had no locksmith.

It also didn’t have any shop where one could purchase ropes, chains, ordinary locks, locking spells, leashes for dogs, wrist cuffs, or any of the other substitutes Harry had thought might have a soothing effect on him, if he couldn’t have a locksmith make him specially shaped personal chains.

Harry closed his eyes and leaned against the wall of his room, wondering how long it would be before he exploded, and if anyone would ever have any idea what had destroyed the town. He had already slammed a hole clean through the wall of a robe-maker’s shop to the outside world, his fist driven by the strength of his magic. The staring woman hadn’t finished cowering when Harry had mumbled an apology and run out of the place, his arse literally on fire.

Now his mind spun and listed badly, and fragments of the thoughts that had plagued him when he was victim to the centaur’s arrow danced in and out of his awareness, making him flinch whenever he encountered them.

All this time, he had basically believed that Ron and Hermione were right and that he was wrong. He _should_ have been stronger. He _shouldn’t_ need this as much as he did, but should have been able to stand on his own two feet and wrestle his anger back under control like a normal person. Hermione had similar habits sometimes, too, at least if her liking for being held down during sex was any indication, but she did that for pleasure, not because it was the only way she could feel like herself.

Only this morning, he had been thinking that Malfoy had done such a good job that he was unlikely to need another session like that for months. Harry would have laughed at the ironies of his life, but he knew the laughter wouldn’t stop.

Something knocked against the window. Harry looked up. His owl, Catherine, was sitting there, holding two letters. Her feathers were all on end, probably because his magic filled the room with the kind of powerful, brooding presence that even an owl could sense.

“You can leave those on the table,” Harry said. His voice sounded as if he chewed gravel for a living. He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to incinerate you, and I might if you come too close.”

Catherine flew across the room, ignoring him, as she had a habit of doing, and dropped the letters on the floor. Harry glanced down. The first had Muggle stamps on it and looked as though someone had fought for possession of it with Catherine. It was probably Annie Crompton’s, Harry thought. All the Muggleborn children had difficulty adjusting to owl post at first.

The second one was just a sheet of parchment, folded, with his name on the outside of it. Harry picked it up and unfolded it, blinking.

The words inside were as simple as his name, and had no signature attached. Of course, for the kind of threat they contained, there was no reason they should.

_I know about your abnormal sexuality. Flawed but normal, I believe was the wording? I wonder what the wizarding world would think if they knew their hero was anything but._

Harry leaned his head back against the wall and laughed after all. He fell into the flames, and he laughed. He fell into the darkness, and he laughed. He wheezed and gasped, and someone pounded on the wall from the next room to let him know that the noise wasn’t appreciated, and still he laughed, because what else in the world could he do?

Catherine was the one who brought him out of it, gripping his ear and pulling it. Harry came back to himself with a gasp and the fear that he would lose a vital part of his body. But the moment he reached up to free himself, Catherine leaped away and flew to the windowsill, where she sat judging him.

“Fine, then,” Harry said. “I’ll carry on like normal as long as I can.” He picked up the anonymous letter and glanced at it again. “Flawed but normal was the phrase I used when I was talking with Dumbledore’s portrait in the library. Someone must have listened in, and it was probably Covington. I don’t think Malfoy would admit anything, since it makes him look bad as well as me, and Ron and Hermione wouldn’t have a reason to hint.”

He stood up and put Annie’s letter aside to read for later, then shook his head at Catherine. She made as good an audience as anyone else, and right now, he really needed to talk this out. “I really believed what I was saying at the time I spoke to Dumbledore, you know? Flawed but normal. That I wasn’t a fantasy hero. And I still think it’s true that I’m not the hero or the person that Dumbledore and my friends wanted me to be.

“But I still _want_ to be that person. That desire is stronger than the desire to just get my life under control. I want to be able to do what they want. I want my friendship with Ron and Hermione back. I want a family. I want a regular lover.” He scrabbled his fingers through his hair. “All that’s a lot more comforting than what I have now, where I’m only calm and happy for a few days after a session, and then my anger starts building up again. I just don’t know how to achieve any of what I want and don’t have.”

Catherine hooted derisively.

“I know,” Harry said. “I know. That’s the last thing I should be worrying about now. But it’s the only _new_ thing that the centaur’s arrow brought out in me. I already knew that I felt guilt about the deaths I caused and all the rest of it. It’s the thing that’s going to be the hardest to deal with—except for the magic that might destroy me or other people.”

He leaned his head back against the wall and began carefully rebuilding his torn barriers. At the moment, that had to be his priority. He and Malfoy would finish the riddle quest as soon as possible, because that would enable Harry to get away as soon as possible and back to Bradley or his paid Muggles. And he would show Covington’s threat to Malfoy in the morning and ask how they should deal with it.

For a moment, just a moment, the thought crossed his mind that he could go back to Malfoy and beg to be bound again.

But he knew Malfoy would refuse, for all sorts of reasons, and why shouldn’t he? 

Catherine chose that moment to screech and leap off the windowsill, soaring in the direction of the Owlery. Harry watched her go and wondered if she had sensed what was going through his mind, and what she thought about it. Her cry really didn’t reveal much one way or the other.

*

Draco should have worked with his sentient potion that evening, but he was too disturbed, even if it _was_ by something that shouldn’t have disturbed him. He settled into the chair in front of the fire in Severus’s rooms instead and thought.

The first thing he had to admit was that he had no rational explanation for what he was thinking and feeling, not at all. Once he got that out of the way and dispensed with, then the emotions could creep to the surface, where he could entertain them.

He was worried about Potter.

He wished that Potter had come back with him to Hogwarts so that they could speak about what had happened in the Forest and come up with a strategy for handling it.

He was still not going to bind Potter to the bed, however, or fuck him, or do anything else for him that would help settle his magic, unless Potter begged him. Because he had had enough of not being desired or wanted for himself, of only being second best or someone else’s bad choice.

The conclusions were all clear enough in his mind, sharp enough to glitter like jewels, or knives made of colored glass that Draco had once seen in a very _select_ shop in Knockturn Alley. But that didn’t give him any idea of what would happen next. He sighed wistfully. Was this really only infatuation with the best fuck of his life, the kind of childish belief that he should have been cured of long before?

“I know that your mind is not on potions.”

“What gave it away?” Draco murmured, not looking up. “The lack of a bubbling cauldron in the room, or the sheer fixed stare?”

He could hear the swish of Severus’s robes as the man paced slowly towards the other side of his portrait. Limited art or not, Draco thought, the painter had done an absolutely magnificent job. “It should be,” Severus said. “Potions, or the job that you are doing here. I never thought you one to succumb to a foolish infatuation with Potter.”

Draco winced. Well, he had only himself to blame if his expression or actions had given away his preoccupations. “Yes, I know,” he said.

Severus paused, and when his voice spoke, the sneer in it couldn’t conceal his surprise. “What? No rebukes that you are an adult man and can fancy whoever you wish? No denials that Potter does not occupy your thoughts?”

“What would be the point?” Draco glanced up and managed a smile. Surprising Severus was its own sort of victory. “You would know I was lying, and I prefer not to be caught in any lie so _obvious_.”

Severus smiled back after a difficult moment when Draco thought that he might be told to leave the room. Then he turned back to his brewing, and Draco returned to his thinking.

The clarity of his conclusions did not vary, and at last he gave up and resigned himself to thinking that he would simply have to wait until Potter came and asked for help of his own free will. It might get them burned to death in the meantime, but at least Draco could say that he went to death clinging to his pride.

And that ought to make him Slytherin enough for even Severus’s approval.

*

“This came by my owl last night.”

Draco barely got his hand up before Potter tossed the letter at him. Draco unfolded it and read it, noting that the edge of the paper was crumpled, as though Potter had crushed it in a fit of passion, but only the edge. At least he had enough sense left to recognize important evidence he should preserve.

“This looks like Covington’s handwriting,” Draco said, covertly watching Potter as he paused near the enchanted window and stared out over the lawn. Potter wasn’t covered with any ghostly flames at the moment, but he did look as if he were tense to the point of snapping. Draco wondered if he should want to be nearby when Potter snapped or not. “How much do you think she knows?”

“With luck? Only the conversation in the library.” Potter spoke in a flat voice. Draco found himself looking for clues in that, and told himself to stop it. “In which case she knows that something is abnormal about my sexuality, but not exactly what. I didn’t see the need to blurt out all the details of my sex life to anyone listening.”

“Good,” Draco said. He could have made other comments, but he left it at that. “Then we can still outface her.”

“Not if she intends to go to the papers.” Potter turned around, pressing his back flat against the wall. “She could talk to Ron and Hermione and learn more details then, and they might tell her. They have no reason to remain silent and protect me now.” He lowered his head and closed his eyes. His face wore a defeated expression.

Draco had to search for the will to render his voice cool, but he managed it. “Well, you can go home, then.”

“Huh?” Potter did look better confused than despairing. Draco told himself to remember that, should he ever have need of such knowledge in the future.

“If you can’t think of a means of fighting her, and won’t,” Draco said, tossing the bubble that contained the next riddle and next keyword from hand to hand, “then you might as well leave. That means that I’ll face her alone. _I_ , at least, am not afraid.”

Potter stood up, and every inch of him bristled with defiance, reminding Draco of the way that he had looked under the chains. Draco bit back the temptation to roll his eyes when he had that thought. He sincerely _hoped_ that the rest of his life wouldn’t be defined by the way that he had had sex with Potter. With luck, his next Potions obsession would knock this one out of his head. “I’m not afraid,” Potter said. “But I won’t be able to stay here if she finds out and exposes the details.”

“I don’t think she would do that,” Draco said. “It’s to her advantage to husband the knowledge. But if she did, your life wouldn’t literally come to an end.”

Severus cleared his throat behind Draco, though he didn’t say anything. Draco knew what the wordless message was meant to convey: Severus’s conviction that he was going too far, recklessly racing after answers that he didn’t want and would pay too much for.

“It might as well,” Potter said, and his voice was sunk in gloom. “They would _laugh_ at me.”

“So?” Draco asked. “I had the impression that you lived at the edge of the wizarding world anyway. You’ve already lost your friends, and they’ve already sacked you from being an Auror. What else can they do?”

Potter glared at him. The glare was far more heated than the one he had given the wall at the mention of Covington, and Draco thought he knew why. Covington simply wanted to hurt him. Potter was used to that. But Draco had the gall to try and make him face himself.

“What else can they do?” Draco repeated, more softly this time, because he was interested in what Potter would say. He stepped forwards, a hand resting on the wall. It was the closest he had been to Potter since the disastrous end of their time together in the Room of Requirement. “Tell me.”

*

Harry had come here expecting not—

Not understanding, not sympathy. He was wise enough to know that all the emotions Malfoy felt like that, he would reserve for himself. But he had thought that he would get some rough good advice about what to do with Covington’s letter, and perhaps Malfoy would be able to keep him so focused that he wouldn’t need to think about what the centaur’s arrow had done to him.

Instead, he got a challenge and open mockery. And Malfoy was asking questions as though he assumed he had the right to an answer.

Harry held his breath in response. It wasn’t done to annoy Malfoy; he doubted that Malfoy would even notice. But he shut his eyes and clung to the stilled motion of air in his chest and the heat that started to build up in his throat and face, the pressure behind his skin, the desperation of lungs reaching for air, until that filled his world and he could think of it instead of the anger.

That didn’t work often, but it did now. From the floating nest of calmed panic that was his mind, Harry answered, “They could make my life a constant parade of Howlers and mocking letters. I was content to sink out of sight when I realized that I couldn’t change the Ministry’s mind about Hogwarts. I don’t want to come back to the public’s notice like this.”

“Indifference breeds indifference,” Malfoy said, as quickly as if he’d anticipated Harry’s answer and had his own ready. Harry felt a swirl of slow rage build up in him. Why did Malfoy _insist_ on this? Harry hadn’t forced him to discuss the past. There was no reason to unless Harry’s magic actively endangered Malfoy, and it wasn’t doing that so far. “If the public has been content to ignore you for this long, I think it would take something a lot more compelling to bring you back to their attention.”

Harry choked back the words that he wanted to speak, that his sexuality _was_ compelling and just scandalous enough to tickle people’s interest. He would sound as though he thought everyone in the world should be interested in him, and he could guess what Malfoy would say to that.

_He can’t continue the argument without me. Why should I let him take advantage of me like that?_

Harry opened his eyes and said, “We should string Covington along, I agree. But we need to come up with a specific lie to tell her so that she’ll think I’m cooperating, rather than plotting to take revenge.”

For a moment, Malfoy’s face shone with exquisite frustration, as if he didn’t know what to do now that Harry had cut their argument off. Then he lowered his eyes and nodded. “Tell her that you would be willing to let her have the keyword,” he said, “but that you can’t do it yet, in case I get suspicious. The line should be that you’re betraying me without my knowledge. She’ll like the thought of having one over on me.”

Harry nodded. “If she presses me for the keyword?”

Malfoy shrugged impatiently. “You can give her a false one, and tell her that they’re useless until we have all four, which I’m sure is true.”

“It is,” Snape said from his portrait.

Harry opened his mouth to ask how Snape knew _that_ , when he didn’t seem to know much _else_ that was useful, but Malfoy rushed on. “We should open the bubble now and see what the third riddle is. We haven’t done so yet.”

Harry nodded again, stepped forwards, and let his hand rest on the bubble. Malfoy caressed his fingers with a lingering motion. Harry drew in a breath of annoyance, but otherwise didn’t react, and after a moment, Malfoy moved his hand in the twist that would draw the bubble open.

The keyword came out, and Malfoy stared at it and then gave a small smile. “ _Silver instruments,”_ he read.

Harry had caught the riddle, and he stared at it.

_Go to the room where the things were lost that are most precious to Rowena, and draw forth the word from that which is most precious to Helga._

Harry blinked and handed it over to Malfoy to see if _he_ had any idea of what this meant. But Malfoy only frowned at the riddle, and turned the parchment over in the next moment to see if anything was written on the other side. Nothing was.

“I don’t quite understand,” Malfoy said, leaning back and cocking his head as though he expected the parchment to reveal the answer just to oblige him. “Ravenclaw favored cleverness, and Hufflepuff loyalty. But those are abstract virtues. You can’t draw forth anything from them, and you can’t find a place where they were lost.”

“Then we should be looking for things that represent them,” Harry said. The solution seemed obvious to him.

Once again, he got a crushing look from Malfoy. But Malfoy only nodded and said, “What represents them, then? And what room in Hogwarts contains them both? We could go to Ravenclaw Tower, I suppose, but I find it hard to believe that they would have an emblem of Hufflepuff House anywhere among their artifacts.”

“Yes, it doesn’t seem likely,” Harry had to agree. “If we could even get into the Tower. I know that a riddle unlocked the door the last time I had to get in, but I don’t know if we could answer it or if anyone’s set a new one.”

Malfoy started to respond, but then paused and turned towards the door to Snape’s rooms. Harry followed his gaze and saw a shadow pass under it. Someone was waiting in the corridor, perhaps to speak to them, perhaps to spy on them.

Malfoy would have stepped forwards, Harry thought, but he moved more quickly, and was glad to have the distraction from the anger that was beginning to build up in him again. He flung the door open, hoping Covington was on the other side of it.

Hermione was, and Ron hovered behind her. She flushed painfully when she saw him, and cleared her throat. Harry waited for a lump of metal to fall out of it, but nothing did.

“I finally managed to cure the curse you put on me,” she whispered. “Can I speak with you, Harry?” She looked over his shoulder, found Malfoy with her eyes, and then turned her head away again, obviously dismissing him from her reality.

“What in the world could we possibly have to say to each other?” Harry asked. He was still angry as he stared at them, but more than anything else, he was weary. If he spoke to them, he knew they would pull down some of the barriers he had put up against the centaur’s arrow, and that meant reliving those agonies over again. He didn’t _want_ to. He didn’t think he had ever been so tired.

“Listen to her,” Ron said, and nodded at Hermione, who then didn’t speak but spent a long minute gnawing her lip.

“Well?” Harry demanded when the minute had passed. Anger was a sustaining force right now. It gave him the strength to step back and grasp the door. “If _you_ can’t come to the point when you were the one who approached me in the first place and asked to talk to me—”

Apparently that was what Hermione needed to force her out of her silence. “No, wait!” she said, eyes wide with something that looked like panic. “We want to work with you on putting Hogwarts back together again.”

Harry sneered automatically, turning to Ron. He was aware of Malfoy stepping up behind him, but saw no need to respond to that. “What? Don’t you think getting rid of Slytherin House is an acceptable compromise anymore?”

Hermione winced, but persevered. The hardest part had always been the beginning for her, Harry remembered. Once she was past that, she could stick to breaking the rules or researching dragons or whatever it was they were doing with thoroughness that outlasted his or Ron’s. “No. We don’t. We’ve—we’ve discovered some things about what the Ministry wants to do that are unacceptable. We want to work with you,” she repeated.

Harry sneered again. “And what makes you think that we want to work with you?” he asked. He badly wanted to swing the door shut, and he did move it an inch or two.

“There are two of us,” Malfoy said. “And you haven’t asked whether I share your opinion in all things, Potter.”

*

Potter turned around looking like a coiled snake, his head bowed, his eyes so bright that Draco thought he would have liked to kill Draco by the sheer force of his glare alone. Draco glanced calmly back—in this case, the one who remained calm would be the one who won—and then faced Granger and Weasley again. Their faces were alight with a pathetic hopefulness.

“I don’t want to work with them,” Potter said, and his voice was charged with emotions that Draco would have wanted to hear from him a few minutes ago. But Weasley and Granger’s entrance had changed things.

“But I want to,” Draco said, and nodded pleasantly to the Weasel and Mudblood, who both watched him as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune. “We could use help to get around the Ministry, Potter, as we were discussing earlier, and we might be able to use help with the riddle.”

“Not _their_ help.”

Draco looked at Potter, astonished to find that he was the composed one for once, which didn’t seem to happen often in their arguments. Potter stood with his arms folded, his body forced away from Draco as though he could lessen their connection by putting physical distance between them. His eyes were brighter than before with hostility.

“Why not?” Draco asked. “We don’t need to tell them everything. Simply what would make them useful to us.”

“And what makes you think we’d put up with that?” Weasley demanded.

Draco turned back to in time to see Granger clamp a restraining hand down on Weasley’s wrist. Draco didn’t need to do anything but smile. Granger was mistress here, and she would make sure that Weasley acted in a reasonable fashion, he thought. Weasley turned a deep red and looked away, which was all the acknowledgement of reality Draco would get from that quarter.

“You’ll put up with it because Granger wants to work with us,” he said. “And once she adopts a crusade, I know that she’s relentless. I remember how hard she worked to try and make everyone stop abusing house-elves.”

Granger flushed. Why not? Draco thought. She wasn’t to know that he retained those memories because they were among his most amusing, not because he had been impressed by her dedication.

And then Granger spoiled it all by turning and looking at Potter, as if he were ultimately the one who had to make the decision about whether they worked together or not. “Harry?” she asked anxiously.

 _Ah, yes, precious Harry,_ Draco thought, and glanced at Potter. “What about it, Potter?” he asked. “You were saying yourself that we don’t have any idea where to begin with this latest riddle. Perhaps Granger could help with that, too.”

Potter stared at him with trembling muscles before he looked away and shut his eyes. Draco wondered whether the rejection in that gesture was meant to cut him as deeply as it did. But he thought not, on the whole. It was meant for Granger and Weasley.

“Fine,” was what Potter said, his voice clipped. “Come up with lies to tell Covington and solve the riddle, too. I’m sure that you’ll have it done before dinner.” He slipped away and was in the corridor before Draco thought to stop him.

“Harry!” Granger cried after him again.

“You’re being rather childish, aren’t you?” Draco asked in his most detached voice.

Potter stared at him over his shoulder. His eyes had darkened from their dangerous shine, but Draco wasn’t sure that he was intended to find much reassurance in that. Potter seemed poised on a quivering edge, though Draco was not quite sure what would happen when he fell from that edge.

“It’s my privilege to choose to be that way,” Potter said. “In fact, I don’t see why anyone needs me any longer, since speaking to Dumbledore’s portrait isn’t necessary at this point.” He stared at Granger and Weasley then, and whatever they saw in his face made them recoil, Weasley uneasily drawing his wand. “But if I try to work with them, they’re going to tear up all the barriers I’ve built and destroy all the progress I’ve made, and it won’t be long before Hermione is recommending Healers. _No_.”

“I won’t, Harry,” Granger whispered, with sincerity as far as Draco could tell. “I promise I won’t.”

“You say that, but I can’t trust you,” Potter said, and walked away.

Granger looked as if she would faint. Weasley caught her in his arms and stood there looking as small and lost as she was. Draco rolled his eyes and took over before these two could hurt themselves trying to think on their own. “We should try to solve this riddle,” he said. “Will you come in and work with me?”

Weasley looked closely at him, as if trying to find the poison hidden in Draco’s offer. Then he sighed and tugged Granger after him. Granger followed him, but her face was still pale and shocked when she took the seat in front of Severus’s portrait. Severus, Draco was glad to note, had the sense not to say anything at all.

Draco waited a moment for Granger to emerge from her trance, and, when she didn’t, took up the riddle and turned to Weasley. “We need to find the room where something precious to Ravenclaw was lost, and within it, something important to Hufflepuff,” he said.

As he had thought it might, the prospect of a question to answer—a non-obvious question—woke Granger up. “Let me see the exact wording,” she said with fragile authority, standing and extending her hand. “Depending on the wording, there are a few things that it could mean. Ravenclaw valued wit, and intelligence, and learning, and study, and books, and riddles…”

Draco leaned back in his chair and watched her with some amusement. Granger had her head close to Weasley’s and was whispering intensely to him, now and then pausing to glare at the riddle as if she thought the wording might have changed between then and her last glance at it. Then she would whisper again, and Weasley would nod. He was devoted to her, Draco thought. Whatever cracks had appeared in the foundation of their friendship with Potter, nothing had happened to affect their bond.

He could wish he had a bond like that.

Draco snorted, though it disturbed neither of the pair across the room. Yes, and he could wish that he had a dozen fully-worked out sentient potions and a calm, tamed Potter kneeling at his feet and awaiting his instructions. As long as he was wishing.

*

Harry went back to his room in Hogsmeade. He could have gone to the Forbidden Forest or elsewhere, but he was tired, and he didn’t want to work on the difficult process of soothing his anger. He wanted a place where he could get drunk in peace.

When he ended up in his room with a bottle of Firewhisky, he realized that someone had been waiting for him. Catherine was on the windowsill, her tail spread out as though she was catching the last rays of the sun. She gave him a single commanding look and turned her back. Harry had no idea why, but he followed the line where her beak had been pointing and saw Annie Crompton’s letter lying on the table.

Harry laughed. The sound made Catherine ruffle her feathers in irritation, but she didn’t turn around. “Oh, yes,” he said. “That letter is going to solve all my problems. The innocence of children, yes? Or the answer to the riddle and the way to control myself will be there, and I would never have known if I hadn’t looked.”

Catherine’s back remained stubbornly turned. Harry had the feeling that he could commit suicide and she would never notice or care. He reached out and picked up the letter, turning it around. It was definitely from Annie. His name was written on the outside of the envelope in painfully neat letters that he could picture her bloody repressed parents making her write over and over again until they were perfect.

A slight smell of singed paper filled the room. Harry shook his head, angry that he couldn’t even hold a bloody envelope without causing some kind of damage, and then tore it roughly open. 

The letter had the same painfully neat writing. Harry lit the fire in the hearth and then leaned towards it so that he could have enough light to read; his aimless wandering during the afternoon and then his inability to find Firewhisky strong enough to drown his sorrows on the first try meant it was dark now.

_Dear Mr. Potter:_

_I don’t know if I should write to you. It is very hard. I want to know about the magical school but maybe I don’t want to go there. What is it like? Will I have my own room? How will I learn magic? Are the teachers mean? What was it like when you were a boy? How long would I be away from my parents?_

_Sincerely yours,  
Annie._

Harry shook his head at Catherine, not that she turned to look. “There’s nothing in here but questions,” he said. “Questions that I can’t answer, since I have no idea what professors still work at Hogwarts, aside from McGonagall and Flitwick. And I have no idea what Ron and Hermione would be like as teachers.”

Catherine spread her wings, stood a moment gazing across the town, and then swooped off. Harry went to the window to watch her fly. She soared silently over the roofs and towards the distant forest. Harry could imagine her becoming lost there, only one more hunter among the dark and tangled branches.

He wished he could fly away from his troubles as easily. Going up on a broom no longer soothed him, or he would have done it long since.

He stayed there with his arms folded on the windowsill, long after he couldn’t see Catherine anymore, long enough for the moon to come up. Then he turned and stared again at the letter on the table, with the jug of Firewhisky beside it. Ideas and thoughts chased themselves around his head and subsided almost before he could see what they were.

Would Annie want to hear from someone as screwed-up as he was, someone who couldn’t even face his own problems without exploding? Someone who had come to Hogwarts intending to try and open the school again on its own terms, not as a place the Ministry could hold power, and had failed?

He wasn’t a hero.

Harry shut his eyes then and, still so near the wall so that he could feel it against his back, slid slowly down to the floor. His ideas solidified and hovered in his head like a huge cloud. He couldn’t see around it. He had to walk through it.

He wasn’t a hero. He had told that to Dumbledore, and at the time, like so much else he had said during the conversation in the library, he had thought he believed it. But he didn’t. He did think that he should be a hero. He should handle all his problems perfectly, leave no way for them to hurt him, and make everyone else as happy with him as they could be when he hadn’t defeated Voldemort the first time he met him, the way a perfect and shining hero would.

Harry dropped his head on his knees and folded his arms around it.

Did it matter that people weren’t happy with him? But of course it did. Ron and Hermione’s disapproval of his method of coping hurt, because they were his friends and Harry wanted them to approve of something he did. Random people in the street could shout curses at him and he would laugh, but his friends were in a different class, an exalted one.

That was the root of the problem, and why he couldn’t work with them when they offered. Sooner or later they would get around to disapproving again, and he would be hurt again, and he would lash out, and that would increase the disapproval, and bring around the whole circle of emotions again in a vicious cycle.

He wished, fervently, that he had never told anyone about what he did to subdue the anger. Then he could have gone on living a normal life in the wizarding world, fighting the Ministry until Hogwarts was free, and choosing the kind of discreet partners who never spilled their clients’ secrets because their reputations meant more money for them in the future than the quick and dirty rewards of blackmail would.

His mind quivered, and he frowned. Someone else had spoken words like that to him recently. Who?

Of course. Dumbledore.

 _I wished to see you have the life you would have had without your parents’ death and without the scar on your forehead.  
_  
“That’s impossible,” Harry whispered. “My parents’ death and my scar have been part of me from the first days I can remember.”

And the fact of his confession to Ron and Hermione had been part of his life for two years now. Why hadn’t he faced up to it yet?

Harry drew a slow, tearing, painful breath, and then climbed to his feet and limped across the room to answer Annie’s letter. He didn’t want to think anymore about what he had just thought, although he knew the cloud would hang in the back of his mind until he did.

And it did. He wrote simple, mechanical answers to most of Annie’s questions, confessing that he didn’t know certain things when he really didn’t, and then sent the letter off with Catherine, who had reappeared silently on the windowsill as if she knew when he’d done something productive. He sat up on his bed and watched the moonrise, and then he watched the shadows creep across the walls, and he fell asleep with the cloud in the back of his mind.

It was only when he woke in the morning that he realized he hadn’t needed the Firewhisky.

*

The spiral staircase that led up to the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room looked as though no one had dusted it in years. Draco curled his lip and silently changed his mind about the Ministry not having interfered with the house-elves.

The door had nothing on it but a brass knocker in the shape of an eagle. Granger rapped it confidently, her eyes shining. Draco wondered idly if it was the activity that pleased her or the chance to show off her intelligence. It required no great brains to decide that the Ravenclaw common room was a likely hiding place for the third keyword, but it might require them to answer the riddle the eagle would ask.

Weasley hovered behind them both. Draco tried to ignore his uneasiness over that. He still had no idea what had motivated Granger and Weasley to offer their help, but he trusted that the spells in his mind and the potions concealed here and there under his robes would protect him if they intended treachery. In the meantime, they were less annoying to work with than Potter was, and Draco intended to keep ahead of the Ministry before he did anything else.

The knocker spoke in a soft, hesitant voice, clearly female. Draco wondered if it was meant to be Rowena Ravenclaw’s. “What makes an Animagus choose his form?”

Granger appeared to grow three inches taller. “ _He_ doesn’t choose,” she said. “The magic chooses for him, but an individual’s magic is part of that individual, and often appears the same as his personal will and desires.”

The door swung open. Granger walked in still strutting, and Draco shook his head in amusement as he followed her. If nothing else, working with her, and knowing how to handle her peculiar pride, meant that he would keep his mind on his work more effectively than he had with Potter.

Potter was…

 _Exasperating,_ Draco thought firmly, in place of the other adjectives he could have used, and then turned and looked around slowly at the Ravenclaw common room, searching for a likely hiding place for the next riddle and keyword.

The room was still bright and airy, despite the layer of grime on the windows and curtains. The ceiling, painted with stars, caught Draco’s eye first; he examined the constellations pictured there, wondering if Severus and Dumbledore were thinking of a symbolic representation of cleverness. On the other hand, most of the legends Draco knew about the figures who had become the constellations didn’t portray their intelligence at all, but rather their brute strength and bad luck.

“Could it have something to do with Ravenclaw’s diadem?” Weasley asked in what he, laughably, must imagine was a whisper, close to Granger’s ear. Draco could hear them, of course, although they were over near the largest window and he stood in the center of the room. “That’s something Ravenclaw lost.”

“Don’t be silly, Ron,” Granger said, with an inflection in her voice that told Draco those were four of her most frequently spoken words. “If Professor Snape and the Headmaster had known about the diadem, then we wouldn’t have had to seek it out. They would already have found and destroyed it.”

Memory stirred in Draco’s head of the Room of Hidden Things and a diadem he had seen once before, slung carelessly over the ear of a statue. But he shook his head, because thoughts of the room would lead to thoughts of Fiendfyre, and _that_ would lead to thoughts of Potter. He was not prepared to deal with them or their distraction from his work yet. “Ravenclaw valued intelligence,” he said aloud. “Hufflepuff valued loyalty.”

“But that’s not the only thing each Founder is famous for,” Weasley said. He seemed determined to prove that he wasn’t a _complete_ waste of space. “Ravenclaw had patience, too, and determination. All those study skills and the hours that you have to spend on research. And Hufflepuff wanted to teach everyone, so she valued inclusivity.” He chewed his lip, an expression on his face that proved he was reaching very deep indeed for all these thoughts. “The riddle said that _Rowena_ and _Helga_ valued these things. We should be thinking about the Founders themselves, not the Houses necessarily.”

Draco inclined his head, impressed in spite of himself. Keep Weasley and Granger away from discussions of sexuality, and they proved their worth. Perhaps that was Potter’s original mistake. “Very well,” he said. “Find me a monument to patience or intelligence or determination in this room, and I’ll concede that you’re right.”

“We shouldn’t be looking for that,” Granger said. “After all, this is the Ravenclaw common room. The whole House embodies virtues that Rowena Ravenclaw believed in. We should be looking for something important to Hufflepuff.” She peered at the windows and the floor with an expression of slight perplexity, as if she thought the relevant feature would announce itself to her.

“Very well,” Draco said, with an elaborately polite tone that neither of them seemed to realize was an insult, though Weasley gave Draco a glare on general principles. “Do you see anything that would symbolize loyalty and inclusivity?”

More inconclusive peering about. Draco himself thought they were in the wrong place—the Ravenclaw common room would be too obvious, and Severus and Dumbledore had meant to make the riddles difficult—but he didn’t yet have a better suggestion, so he held his peace. Weasley cast spells on the curtains while Granger murmured a few specialized charms at the chairs.

Draco leaned back on the wall and closed his eyes. Yes, what the Founders had valued mattered, but so did what Severus and Dumbledore thought of the Founders valuing. Very few direct historical records remained of the Founders’ time; it wasn’t even known for sure why Slytherin had left the school, though of course every House had its own tradition. So what about Dumbledore and Severus? What would they have believed? Draco wished that the portraits had enough memories left to answer that question.

What had they both feared losing most? 

That answer was easy. The war. But Draco had to admit that he couldn’t immediately see the connection between losing the war and losing something precious to Ravenclaw.

 _Go back to that year in your mind,_ he command himself. _Think about what Severus said to you concerning the war when you were alone together. Think about his effort to rescue you and keep you from killing Dumbledore. It wasn’t about preserving the old man’s life. You knew that, later, It was about preserving your innocence, your soul. They would have worried about people losing their souls._

But there again Draco ran aground, because that wasn’t something Ravenclaw, as far as he knew, had ever cared about. The traditions of Slytherin said that Ravenclaw thought souls were in books, if they were anywhere. She would have run to save the library before any one individual student.

_I wish I could talk with Potter. Dumbledore might have said something he would remember._

Draco rejected the notion instantly. For that matter, he could speak with Dumbledore’s portrait himself, assuming the daft old man would come when Draco called. And Potter wasn’t likely to offer them any help.

He, Granger, and Weasley spent hours in Ravenclaw Tower, but came to no conclusions. Granger finally led the way down the staircase, frowning.

“I was so sure,” Draco heard her muttering to herself. “Where else would they have put it? There’s no other area in the school strongly associated with Ravenclaw, unlike the Chamber of Secrets with Slytherin. Where _is_ it?”

Draco smiled grimly. At least he could be sure that he and Granger had one emotion in common that might serve to bind them together: frustration.

*

The cloud was waiting for Harry to work through it when he sat up in bed the next morning.

He could have left, of course. There was nothing to prevent that, not really. But he _felt_ as if there was. The cloud of emotions and dreads crouched between him and the door like a wild beast, refusing to let him out.

 _Fine,_ Harry thought, leaning back on the pillows and closing his eyes to block out the light from the window and thus the temptation to look at it. _Is there anything I can do to come to terms with my shame over needing to be tied?_

He couldn’t think of anything. He ought to be able to keep it private if he wanted to. Considering the disastrous consequences that had followed when he confessed the truth to Ron and Hermione, and the threat Covington was holding over his head from the minor knowledge she possessed, keeping it private was the best course.

But the reason for that privacy?

Harry winced. This was the weak point where Malfoy would attack him, and he knew it. If he could come up with the arguments to counter it, then he would be prepared both for the chance that he might meet Malfoy again and for the nights when he lay awake in his bed and wondered if he could have done anything different.

“I shouldn’t have to keep it private out of shame,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have to keep it private because I’m afraid of the way people will look at me once they know what I need. I shouldn’t have to keep silent about it for anything other than my own choice.”

So much for the arguments Malfoy would make. The objections crowded Harry’s throat—objections that all came from himself, and not from arguments that other people had tried to feed him. That made it a lot easier for Harry to take them seriously. He had always needed this, maybe, time to sit down and think about it by himself instead of the talking that Hermione and the Mind-Healers thought was the right thing.

_You still wouldn’t be doing this if the centaur’s arrow hadn’t forced you to face it._

Harry silently acknowledged that and then put aside the thought. So maybe he wouldn’t have done this on his own. The important thing was that he _faced_ what was happening, surely, not why. He would worry about the motive behind it later.

What were the reasons against keeping his needs silent merely because of his choice?

“I don’t want to need this,” he whispered, and then paused, listening to the echoes of his words die away in his empty room. They did much the same thing in the empty confines of his skull. 

That was the root objection, the one that all the other, defensive and offensive arguments came from. He could argue to Hermione that it was the only thing that worked and therefore he had to accept it, which was true. But if God had woken him up tomorrow and offered him a different choice, to be someone who wasn’t fucked-up like this, then Harry knew what he would have chosen.

_So. What do I do about that? Do I really have to be “comfortable in my own skin,” the way that Hermione would phrase it, all the time?_

Harry leaned back against the headboard and gave the answer to that one aloud. He wasn’t even sure which side of the argument he was on anymore; he just knew what the answers to certain questions were. “I don’t have to be. I can feel discomfort about my choices. But I need to be able to act so that I’m not constantly getting in my own way, or burning down buildings, or endangering other people.”

In his bitterer moods, he’d been pleased when people backed away from him, staring with wide eyes at the flames that coiled down his sides. But that wasn’t the way he wanted to _live_. He wanted to sit in a Muggle home that reminded him of the Dursleys’ and concentrate on the effect the parents might have on their magical children, rather than simply roiling about in a sea of his own memories.

But there wasn’t a way, that Harry knew of, to become more comfortable with the dreaded, stupid, ugly thing that he needed. Why should there be? Normal people didn’t do that, and Harry had wanted to be normal, had wanted to be “just Harry,” for a long time.

He winced suddenly. 

_That’s what I told Dumbledore I was. Flawed and normal. But I’m not. I’m not a hero, and I’m not normal in the way he wanted me to be, but I’m not normal in the way I thought I was, either. I’m—strange._

The thoughts after that came slowly, as if Harry was pulling a thick rope out of caverns choked with rot and slime. He’d got so far easily because these were conversations that he’d often had with himself before. But now he had to think new thoughts, and test them for truth, and slowly work them into congruity with the ones that had come before.

It took a long time.

*

“I don’t know where else to look.”

Draco arched his eyebrows. Granger admitting defeat was a large thing, for her, and probably novel, from the way she sat on the chair in Severus’s quarters with her head slumped into her hands. Draco studied her for a moment, then turned to Weasley, waiting to see if he was any more hopeful.

But Weasley was staring at the wall with the pathetic-puppy look that Gryffindors pulled off so well. Draco kept his scowl behind the placid, perfect mask of his face. He had run into the limitations of working with Weasley and Granger, it seemed. Potter was more sullen, but he also had more ideas. Draco had accepted Weasley and Granger’s help because it seemed they would help him move closer to the end of his task more quickly, but what good was that if they gave up at the first obstacle?

 _Well, one gives up and the other sits down because she thinks for him,_ Draco amended conscientiously.

“There must be somewhere else,” Draco said. “I know that you’ve read _Hogwarts, A History._ ” Draco had seen her carrying around the enormous book more than once when they were students, and as far as he knew, she was the only one who ever took it out of the library. “Is there a historical event during which Ravenclaw lost something? Faith, her family, an artifact that was important to her and that Professor Snape and the Headmaster would have known about?” He was not going to call Severus by his first name in front of this pair.

Granger shook her head. “I’ve already thought about everything like that,” she said, and went on before Draco could do no more than stare at this frankly incredible claim. “There was one possibility, but the professors couldn’t have known about it. It had to do with defeating Voldemort, you see, and I’m sure they would have done it on their own rather than leave it for Harry and us to do during the war.”

Draco carefully tucked away that statement as something he wanted to ask Potter about later—if there was a later, with them—and shrugged. “Then I suggest we spend a few hours apart and think on it in private.” _If Weasley can, when his brains are in your skull._ “Perhaps we will have more ideas when we come back together again.”

He thought Granger would object, but she didn’t, only nodding wearily and leaving the rooms with Weasley trailing after her. Draco shook his head. Perhaps Granger was one of those people who needed to brood on an idea until it came to her in a brilliant flash, the way that Draco’s solution for the riddle the day before last had come to him.

And then again, perhaps she was good at puzzles related to homework and the Dark Lord and nothing else.

Draco was about to summon a house-elf to bring him food when someone knocked at his door. Draco paused. He didn’t think that was Potter repenting of the way he had treated Draco or Granger rushing back with an unanticipated answer. It sounded official.

_Covington._

Well, Draco had wondered when she would attack. No surprise that she would wait until what seemed the breakup of a discussion of allies and then come along and “politely” inquire what progress they might have made.

He strolled to the door in a leisurely fashion, but Covington showed no impatience when he opened it. In fact, she gave him a simple smile and made a deprecatory gesture with one arm. “You might already have eaten,” she said, “as it’s rather late for a noon meal, but I would invite you to lunch if you haven’t.”

Draco measured her with his eyes for a long, silent moment. Covington retained her smile and showed no sign of impatience.

 _Strange that she would be attacking me instead of Potter. He’s the weak link in any defense, with his terror of blackmail._ Draco gritted his teeth against the surge of contempt that swept over him. _But perhaps that’s the point. She’s sure of success there, and she’s come to try and gain the same sort of foothold with me._

“I would be delighted,” he said, and turned to gather up his cloak, in case she wanted to eat outside.

“Have you seen Potter today?” Covington asked his back. “I had important matters to speak with him on, but he seems to be avoiding me.” There was a tone of concern in her voice, not hurt, which Draco had to applaud her for. She knew as well as he that she wouldn’t get away with sounding _hurt_ that Potter was refusing something to the Ministry, or rather, to the Ministry through her.

“I haven’t, actually,” Draco said, and decided that Covington might as well share his worry. “He might be leaving the school. He said something to that effect yesterday.”

He was in time, when he turned back, to see her standing there with staring eyes and down-drawn brows. But she recovered so quickly Draco wasn’t sure if she was worried or only surprised, and held out her arm to him. Draco took it and tucked it through his.

He did glance back before he left the room, but for once, Severus had no words of advice.

*

By the end of several hours of concentration that left him as weary as he had sometimes got working outside in the garden on Privet Drive, Harry had come to several conclusions.

First, he was always going to be strange and different. His one big chance to fit in to the normal wizarding world had come after the war had ended, and he’d botched it. He hadn’t stayed an Auror, he hadn’t married and had a family, and he couldn’t be just a normal bent wizard, either. That was the way it was.

Second, he had to put up with needing to be bound. If he was lucky, it would be once every few months the way it had always been. If he wasn’t lucky, it would happen more often. He could complain, he could hide it, he could accuse Ron and Hermione bitterly of any crime he liked, but he wouldn’t change it.

Third, things _would_ be more comfortable if he had a regular lover who was willing to put up with his strangeness and help him. But Harry had no idea who such a lover could be or what he could offer in return.

Fourth, he was going to try again with Ron and Hermione. He hadn’t been the only one at fault, but he’d been a lot more ashamed than he’d thought he’d been. So he would tell them that, explain, apologize, and emphasize that he was _not_ going to become Hermione’s therapy project, and that would have to do.

Spent, Harry lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what came next, at least in the immediate sense. He had paid for his room until tomorrow and didn’t need to move or even go down to fetch dinner if he didn’t want to.

But restlessness hammered against his sides and his skull, and eventually, when he felt he could, he stood up and went to take a shower that should relieve the aches and pains.

And after that…

Harry reckoned he could do worse than going up to Hogwarts and seeing if he could corner his former best friends.

*

 

“Mr. Potter is reluctant to take advantage of the offer we have made him. I was wondering if you could tell me why that is?”

Draco took a long, slow sip of his soup before he answered. Covington had taken him to a restaurant in Hogsmeade that had opened since Draco’s time at Hogwarts, the Silver Apple, which he had heard about but never visited. Its reputation for quietness, dim fires, and excellent food was real. Draco couldn’t say anything about the brilliance of the conversation, its other reputed feature, given who he was dining with.

“Surely you must understand Potter’s psychology better than I do,” he murmured. “You work for the Ministry he also worked for, until two years ago.”

Covington sighed. “I never dealt with him when he was there, and I don’t quite understand the roots of the philosophical disagreement that made him leave. Perhaps you can help me understand that as well?”

Draco had to smile at her audacity. Covington didn’t seem to know what to make of the smile, if the hesitation before she began to pick at her salad again was any indication.

“I understood that the philosophical disagreement was simple and one that you must have had ample opportunity to observe for yourself,” Draco said mildly. “After all, he disagreed with the control that the Ministry wanted to have over Hogwarts.”

Covington raised her shoulder in a shrug. “Someone must. Dumbledore may have been wise, but not all Headmasters of the school can be equally wise. And of course, the idea that the government of the wizarding world should not have a say in the schooling of our children would be one that many reasonable people would look askance at.”

“We should at least try the experiment of an independent school under the guidance of another Headmaster before declaring that no one else could maintain the quality of his rule,” Draco said, and finished his soup.

“We have tried the experiment of an independent school for many years,” Covington countered. “Children were exposed to war and to choices that they should never have had to make.”

Draco raised an amused eyebrow. “Are you suggesting it was Dumbledore’s fault that Death Eaters took over the school in the last year before it closed, rather than the Dark Lord’s?” He wanted to see how Covington would get out of that one.

“I am sure the Headmaster did not intend what happened,” Covington said, in the gentle tone that could so easily suggest the exact opposite. “But it is true that he trusted Severus Snape more than he should have, and prioritized maintaining his cover among the Death Eaters over the safety of his students.”

“If no Headmaster can be another Dumbledore, then surely that will not happen again,” Draco said sweetly, and restrained the temptation to point out that, if Dumbledore hadn’t done that, the chances were excellent that they would now all be slaves of the Dark Lord.

“We have seen what wizards can do when pushed to the breaking point of their most fundamental passions,” Covington said. “When they fear for their lives. Students who come to Hogwarts in a few years’ time will feel the effects of that legacy. Soon we will have the children of those who fought in the war. What will their parents have taught them? That safety is to be prized over anything else, because survival was during the war. We have an obligation to consider keeping our students _alive_ first.”

“I fail to see how an independent Headmaster would jeopardize that.” Draco considered ordering a salad of his own and decided he wasn’t hungry enough.

Covington sighed. “I have provided evidence. If you do not wish to listen to it, that is your affair.”

“Which leaves us where we were before,” Draco observed, and signaled the waiter for a glass of wine. “You wishing to understand what happened between Potter and the Ministry, and wishing to know what happened when Potter left the Ministry, and me unwilling to tell you.”

Covington smiled and looked over his head. “I think that we can settle this matter by appealing directly to the party we are both interested in,” she said. “I see Potter walking down the street outside. Shall we go to him?”

Startled, Draco turned his head. Yes, through the large plate-glass window of the Silver Apple, he could see Potter walking down the main street of Hogsmeade, a determined expression on his face. An Impervious Charm covered his hair against the light rain that had started falling, but it had managed to look disordered anyway. Draco licked his lips and hoped that he looked sufficiently cool and uninterested.

“Let’s,” he said, and nodded to the waiter before placing sufficient Galleons on the table to cover the cost of the meal.

*

“Potter!”

At least the name they used told Harry this wasn’t Ron or Hermione even before he turned around. He didn’t think they would call him by his surname when he’d last seen them outside Snape’s rooms anxious to reconcile with him.

But he had to admit, he didn’t expect to see _both_ Covington and Malfoy when he turned around, only the first one. He immediately turned his head and kept his eyes fixed on Covington alone. He had no idea what he would have said to Malfoy even if he wanted to see him.

Malfoy was fixing his gaze on Harry as if he _did_ know what he wanted to say and planned to lash Harry with his words. Harry straightened his back and ignored him.

He would speak with his friends, yes. They had showed that they wanted to reconcile, and that gesture alone had been enough to startle Harry into reevaluating truths that he’d thought were long since pinned-down. But Malfoy had pushed him and pushed him and—

Had said things that also made Harry realize that he was still ashamed of a secret he’d thought he’d come to terms with.

 _The centaur’s arrow was what did the real work, not Malfoy’s words,_ Harry told himself, and then attended to the conversation. “Malfoy, Covington,” he said, with shallow nods of his head, and nothing else. He didn’t think that he could reasonably pretend to be interested in their health, when one of them had threatened him and he had walked away from the other with angry words.

“Potter,” Malfoy said, and Harry knew then that Covington must have spoken his name the first time. Malfoy’s voice was soft, caressing, and he matched the word with a peculiar smile that made Harry instantly cautious.

He shrugged a little and said, “Was there something you wanted?”

“Covington had a question that she wanted to ask you, yes,” Malfoy said in innocent tones that made Covington straighten up in turn. “She wanted to know why you broke from the Ministry over the matter of Hogwarts.”

“Because I thought you lot would take over the school and turn it into a machine for the production of good little machine-citizens, however you define them,” Harry said, unmoved. He could say anything he liked now. He was going to leave and wasn’t involved in this delicate dance of keeping Hogwarts free of the Ministry. Ron and Hermione and Malfoy could probably manage that if they were allied, anyway. “How can you question that?”

“That is not what we would have done,” Covington said, and all but fluttered her eyelashes at him.

But Harry wasn’t going to be taken in with those subtle games. He shrugged to throw off her claim on him, and then said, “Of course you say that, but that’s the way it would have worked out, and I don’t care any longer about propitiating you. Someone who threatens to blackmail me quite often loses my sympathy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Covington’s tone had turned flat and bored, and anyone who passed them and glanced at her would have thought she was discussing a matter of no more importance than the next meal they would have together.

“Pretend that, then,” Harry said. “I’m indifferent to it now.” He nodded to Malfoy. “I wish you well in your goal of getting Slytherin House restored and winning any other consolations that you can wrench from their clutches.” He turned his head.

“You and I have more business to talk about than that, Potter,” Malfoy said.

Harry closed his eyes as he suffered a spasm of irritation. He gave Malfoy every chance to walk away, and Malfoy still insisted on making the connection. Harry didn’t understand. Malfoy thought he was stupid and stubborn and oblivious. Why would he _want_ to sleep or talk with someone like that?

_Maybe you can take this chance to show him that you’re no longer like that._

Harry hesitated and then turned back. “Fine,” he said. “You have five minutes, and I want to do it in private, not in front of her.” He jerked his head at Covington.

Covington appeared to have already been offended by the fact that Harry wouldn’t play her little games anymore. She shook her head with a cold smile. “You need not worry about me, Mr. Potter,” she murmured. “I will be content if I can serve the goals of the wizarding world’s future, rather than my own private feuds.” She bowed to them and stalked away, cloak all but floating behind her.

“You might just have ruined our strategy,” Malfoy wasted no time in telling Harry.

“The way that you will, by telling me how I did, in front of a street full of strangers?” Harry asked in interest.

Malfoy jolted as though someone had pinched his arse and looked over his shoulder suspiciously. Then he made a beckoning motion and walked into a side alley between two shops that didn’t have windows facing the alley. Harry gave a little sigh and followed. He hoped that he had the sense to walk away if it turned out that talking with Malfoy would produce nothing but frustration.

 _That’s the first of many steps that I could take to try and live a new and better life,_ he thought, leaning against the wall of the alley and regarding Malfoy with as much indifference as he could. _Don’t put up with situations that frustrate me._

“What did you want?” he asked. “Covington had a question, but did you?”

“I wanted to know if you’d done some thinking in the day since we parted,” Malfoy said, and raked him with an expert glance. “No actual growing up, I see. You can’t even be bothered to comb your hair.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I was going up to the castle to try and apologize to Ron and Hermione, if you must know.”

Malfoy again jolted. Harry wondered if that was uncomfortable for him. He leaned forwards this time and scanned Harry’s face as if he could read the truth there, even though Harry was _telling_ him the truth. “Why?” he breathed.

Harry shrugged. “The centaur’s arrow made it possible for me to face some of the things I’d been repressing.” He hesitated, then decided to be generous. Maybe Malfoy would be less frustrating if he was. “And so did your words. It made no sense to be so ashamed of my secret if I’d really accepted it.”

“What did you decide about that?” Malfoy’s voice shifted a tone deeper. 

“That I’ll probably always need my—things,” Harry said, and Malfoy half-turned his head as if to conceal a smile. Harry hissed. “Fine. I’ll always probably have to be bound and fucked. But once every few months, to control my anger, not as a regular activity. And I’d like someone to share it with, but I doubt that person exists.”

“I could be that person.”

Harry stared. There was no reason for him not to.

*

Draco knew Severus would have deplored the risk. So would he, in more rational moods. But “rational” did not apply to standing in an alley with Harry Potter and talking about his sex life.

He had had the most amazing sex of his life with this man, though. He had commanded him to return to the real world with his voice alone, and Draco had to admit that was a rush of power when he thought about it—away from the immediate dangers of facing the centaur’s arrow and fearing that Potter would die for it, or at least be lost forever to mental isolation. He’d fought the water-snakes and solved the riddles with him. Draco foresaw the possibility for an intellectual companionship with Potter as well as a sexual one, if he would get his head out of his arse.

No, Potter would never be an expert brewer. But Draco didn’t speak only to other Potions masters. He did, though, have a need in his life for someone who would be unlike him and yet close that his spies and friends and occasional lovers couldn’t fulfill.

It was stupid to try to fulfill the need now, at this time. Draco could acknowledge that. But he didn’t think Potter was the type to spread the news about, when he was so intent on keeping his sexuality secret. So it was the safest stupid risk of Draco’s life, because at least he could be an idiot in private.

He hated, at the moment, the idea that he might sit back in his wise silence and let a good chance pass by more than he hated the idea of being rejected.

“But you—” Potter said, and lowered his eyes. “I couldn’t do that every time. I don’t _need_ that every time.”

“Neither do I,” Draco responded instantly. It was true; though it had been wonderful, he could make love in other positions, in other ways. His own experience revealed that. “But don’t you want to see what we could desire, as well as need?”

Potter swallowed and linked his hands together in front of his stomach, staring at them. Draco had no idea what they told him.

“I’m starting to accept these desires,” Potter said at last, the words sounding as if they were slicing his throat as he spoke them. “That doesn’t mean that I could have a regular lover based on them.”

“You don’t know that it _means_ that, either,” Draco said, and then realized that the words probably didn’t say what he had wanted them to say. He hurried on before Potter could recover from that and use the weapon against him. “I mean—why did you walk out of the room the instant we were done?”

“I always do,” Potter said. He gave Draco a quick, wondering glance. “I understand why better now that I understand myself better, of course, but that doesn’t change things. I don’t want to spend time with someone who had to do that for me, either because of money or reluctantly. My Muggle lover who did it was uncomfortable because it was too extreme.”

“I wasn’t uncomfortable,” Draco said, and waited.

Potter let his nostrils flare open. “I was.”

“Uncomfortable enough not to do it with me again?” Draco took another risk, because he was so far along a strange and winding road that there seemed no reason not to do so. “I must admit, it would serve to settle and soothe and clarify my mind. Among other things, I’ve made no progress on the riddle with Weasley and Granger. The key doesn’t seem to be in the Ravenclaw common room, and that’s all we know.”

“I—I hadn’t thought ahead that far,” Potter said. “I hadn’t thought beyond the apology that I meant to make to Ron and Hermione.”

 _There would be reasons for him not to do so,_ Draco thought. _He’s new to this life where he actually questions and criticizes and tries to understand his own actions, and he would be wary of thinking about the future._

That was no reason, of course, that Potter had to go without a lover. Indeed, perhaps he could use someone whose subtle guidance—not always as firm as it had to be in the bedroom—could help him ask questions and bear the answers in the other areas of his life.

And what would Draco get out of the arrangement?

Draco had to smile at that. _Great fucking and the sheer intensity I felt with him is a good place to start._

“I suggest you go further,” he said, being careful not to phrase it as an order. Potter was more complex than some of the people Draco had heard about who needed someone to step in and claim control of every aspect of their lives. He had learned that yesterday when he had tried to command Potter with simple hard touches, and he prided himself on never needing the same lesson twice. “Think about solving the riddles in my company, and theirs. That’s not such a hard task for a beginning, is it?”

“Harder than you know,” Potter whispered. “I’m simultaneously ashamed and not of what I said to them. I don’t know what I should apologize for, exactly, and what I should stand firm on, except for one or two things.”

“Tell me,” Draco whispered back. “Let me help you.”

Potter’s eyes came up to him, wide and startled. Draco could see why, too; Potter thought Draco was likely to ask to fuck him, not help him. But this was part of the risk, part of the arrangement that Draco could see them coming to if everything worked out the way he sincerely hoped it would. So, instead of withdrawing, he raised his eyebrows and let Potter come to his own conclusions about where Draco would stand. 

*

Harry could hardly believe that he was on the brink of making one of the most important decisions of his life in an alley in Hogsmeade. But then again, he had made a lot of important decisions in an upstairs room at the Three Broomsticks last night and this morning. That didn’t mean he had to go on putting things off.

At the same time, it was terrifying to lean on Malfoy. In a bedroom with his anger eating him alive otherwise, sure. Here?

Harry reminded himself, carefully, that there was no reason he couldn’t back out if it didn’t work. That was one thing he had learned recently, too: that he didn’t have to make one decision and stay with it forever and ever. He could think about forgiving Ron and Hermione. He could think about trusting Malfoy, and working with him to solve the riddles and keep Hogwarts free of Ministry influence.

_Maybe. I still don’t see how that could be done._

But that was no reason not to take up Malfoy’s offer for the other things—always assuming that he could really trust Malfoy. He could use a voice that wasn’t his own to offer him advice, at least.

“All right,” Harry said, slowly, with difficulty, and met Malfoy’s eyes. “I know I should stand firm on refusing to have treatment for this. I did try that, talking with Mind-Healers and with Hermione. It didn’t work. I don’t want them to persuade me to ‘visit’ someone about this or make it a price of having their friendship back. If they don’t want me on my own terms, without a Mind-Healer’s name, then I’ll walk.”

Malfoy gave him a soft, pleased smile, and Harry felt as though someone had touched him gently in the region of his back where Malfoy had kept his hand when they walked away from Covington and Ron and Hermione at the lake the other day. He frowned. _That could be dangerous, if his approval affects me so much._

Seemingly oblivious to what he was feeling, Malfoy continued, “And what else will you stand firm on?”

Harry lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug. “I don’t know. Other than that I don’t want them to talk more about how my sexuality is pathological. That’s all I can think of.”

“That’s a good list,” Malfoy said. “May I also suggest that you tell them you’ll work out whatever issues they may think you have with the help of people other than Mind-Healers? If you had friends that you thought you could speak to _honestly_ about these things, without criticism, then it would go a long way towards helping you. They could be those friends, if only they could keep unhelpful opinions to themselves.” He paused, his eyes brightening. “And, of course, having a regular lover would help, too.”

Harry gave his head a little nervous toss that he couldn’t help. “If it gets that far,” he muttered.

“I should say that it would be more _un_ likely not to get that far,” Malfoy murmured, but didn’t explain what he meant when Harry gave him a challenging stare. “Tell them that. Will you let me come with you?”

A suggestion, a question. Not an order. Harry studied Malfoy in detail as he stood there, leaning elegantly against the wall—of course he did even that elegantly—and tried to understand him.

Malfoy only gave him that lovely smile and said nothing. Harry had to admit that he probably wouldn’t understand him without extensive experience, which of course he wouldn’t acquire without spending time with Malfoy.

_The kind of time that regular lovers might spend together?_

Harry refused to decide that right now. He nodded to Malfoy and said, “I want you to come with me. Please do so.”

Malfoy immediately stepped up to him, before Harry could consider whether or not he would or whether or not he wanted the git to, and touched his lips swiftly to Harry’s. Harry didn’t have time to react to the kiss before Malfoy whispered, “I hoped that you would say that,” and cupped the edge of his jaw with tentative fingers.

Harry had to make another decision in the next few moments, and he hoped that he made the right one. He stuck out his tongue to lap lightly at Malfoy’s fingers, waited until he heard the man catch his breath, and then nodded.

*

“Malfoy!” Granger was rising to her feet the moment the door to her and Weasley’s quarters opened, her eyes wide. “We didn’t know where you had gone. We were afraid that Covington had— _Harry_.”

The change was visible at once, Draco saw. Her eyes had been wide for him, but they were enormous for “Harry.” They quivered at the edges, and she reached out a hand and then abruptly tucked it behind her back as if fearing he would spurn it. She licked her lips and stared at him with an intensity that would have made Draco—and, he thought, most other sane people—back off.

But Potter had never been sane—luckily for Draco, or he probably wouldn’t have considered spending time with someone who had fucked him once. He gave an uncomfortable smile and muttered, “Hermione. Ron.”

Weasley was on his feet, and he looked as if he didn’t know where to touch Potter or not. “You have a lot of nerve, coming here,” he said.

“After you acted as though you wanted to reconcile with me?” Potter’s smile was twisted, and he leaned against the doorframe as if he were doing it to irritate his friends now. “Perhaps I should have listened to my instincts instead of my conscience after all.”

“He just means that we didn’t expect to see you in our rooms, after we failed to convince you in Malfoy’s, where you spend a lot of time,” Granger said dismissively. Draco wondered why Weasley nodded as if the explanation made sense. Even stranger, Potter returned a small nod of his own, and then stepped forwards to stand in front of her.

“First things first,” Potter said. “We all said some wrong things. We can argue for years about what those were, exactly. But I’m not going to get ‘help’ for the issues that you think I have, except from friends I actually trust, and you can give up that notion.”

Weasley and Granger exchanged glances. Granger ground her teeth in what Draco thought was genuine anguish. Well, it probably was when her whole identity depended on being able to tell other people what to do. But in the end, she inclined her head and murmured, “I agree.”

“And me, too,” Weasley said, when Potter switched his glare to him.

Potter gave a short nod. “Good. I would prefer not to discuss it at all, but we’ll need to do it if we’re going to resolve this argument.” He pulled a chair around from in front of Granger and sat down on it, though he at least turned it so that he was facing his friends over the back. Draco had the obscure sense that it would have been wrong for him to sit comfortably and normally with his friends as if nothing had ever happened. “Now. What did you feel I said and did that was most wrong?”

Weasley and Granger exchanged glances, which made Draco snort. This was the kind of topic that they would have discussed extensively among themselves beforehand. Draco knew them. They were the kind who lay awake at night spinning elaborate dreams and dramas about what would happen if their friend returned to them. Weasley and Granger were probably only surprised that their fantasy had so suddenly been transported into the real world, rather than shocked that it had happened.

“Insulting me,” Granger said finally. “Implying that I was—abnormal. Using information that I trusted you with against me.”

Draco raised his eyebrow. He had wondered for the barest moment whether he should leave them alone, but this was too interesting to miss. He hoped that no one would remember that he was here and make him leave. Granger and Weasley probably wouldn’t want an audience to their little eccentricities, whatever those were, but they were too focused on Potter to notice him right now.

“Yes, that was wrong of me,” Potter said, unflinching, dry-eyed. Draco thought he was the only one who noticed the way Potter’s fingers dug into the wood on the back of his chair. Weasley and Granger would be paying too much attention to his face. “I shouldn’t have turned on you even when you turned on me.”

“I never gave anyone details,” Granger said earnestly. “I only mentioned the problem in a general way to Mind-Healers, and they agreed that someone who had been abused the way you have should have found a healthier way to cope with it.”

Potter audibly ground his back teeth together, and then seemed to accept that his friends would _have_ to talk about Mind-Healers in the present discussion. “Fine. But I would say that it was manipulation, Hermione, not abuse.”

“Dumbledore had _no_ right to do that to you!” Granger leaned forwards as though straining to break out of the chair against chains, and Weasley nodded his support and put a hand on her shoulder. “It doesn’t matter if his plans turned out well. He was perfectly willing to sacrifice you, Harry! To let you die! Why do you keep acting as though what he did was forgivable, or, or _excusable_? You know that he would have let you die!”

“There was no other way, really,” Potter said, with a glance over his shoulder. He, at least, hadn’t forgotten their audience. “I accepted that once I understood the whole of it. I was angry, but the acceptance was more important.”

“He was powerful,” Weasley said, unexpectedly breaking into the conversation. “He was _brilliant_. He could have done something else if he really wanted to.”

Potter gave Weasley a piercing glance. “I know you understand everything, because I explained it to you,” he said. “What else could he have done? Given the time he died, and the things he didn’t know at the time? Could he have _known_ that I would sacrifice myself, the puling little boy that I was in sixth year? Or did he have to let my convictions grow, taking intolerable risks all along the way?”

“You’re my friend,” Weasley whispered. “Any risk that wasn’t with your life would have been fine with me.”

Potter shook his head. Draco had to admit that he could see why his friends found him irritating, with that wise dark smirk on his lips, but it was the simple truth that Potter _was_ wiser, as he proved with his next words. “And you would have been prone to risking your family the same way? And Hermione? And the world? And Hogwarts? And the future of any children you might have?”

Weasley bowed his head. Granger reached out and put her hand on his arm in reassurance the way Draco had seen her do earlier, then turned to Potter. “It still wasn’t fair that the whole burden should fall on you.”

Potter rolled his eyes. “I’ll make sure to tell fate that next time.”

Granger swelled up, but Potter sighed and gestured her to stand down before Draco make the suggestion himself. “Sorry, Hermione. But no, it wasn’t fair. But there was also nothing anyone could _do_ about it. Dumbledore’s portrait told me that, too, that he wished I could have lived a normal life without Voldemort marking me, with my parents alive. I wish I could have lived with your friendship the past two years. But that’s not _what happened_. We either have to put up with that, or start expecting the universe to conform to our wishes. And we know it doesn’t do that.” He leaned forwards, smiling at Granger as if inviting her into some communion of enlightenment. “Don’t you?”

Granger gave him a miserable look and nodded slowly. “You’ll go on doing what you’re doing,” she said.

Draco rolled his eyes in turn. It amazed him that all Granger’s joy in getting her friend back seemed to be dimmed by the mere suspicion that he _might_ continue letting someone else tie him to the bed.

“Yes,” Potter said. “That’s not negotiable.”

“But,” Granger said, and then left the word there, hanging in the wind between them, probably because she’d seen the look on Potter’s face.

This time, Weasley was the one who leaned down and stroked her shoulder soothingly. “Leave it,” he mouthed; Draco couldn’t hear a sound. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Draco sneered. _No, you won’t, not without me beside him._ It annoyed him that the Wonder Sidekicks could get what they wanted, and still push for more. Of course, they would probably never be satisfied until they had Potter locked in matrimony to the She-Weasel and the father of seven little brats of his own.

_Not that that will happen._

“I am sorry,” Potter said. “I don’t think I said that enough.” He hesitated, then stood up and went forwards to embrace his friends. Granger whispered something Draco couldn’t hear into his ear as she stroked his hair. Weasley clapped him on the back and stood away, though Granger seemed content to hug him for much longer than that.

“We’ll manage it,” Granger said when he finally let her go, wiping her tears from her face with a sleeve. “We’ll come back together.”

 _Not exactly as you were,_ Draco thought, and would have said, if not for the glow deep down in Potter’s eyes.

*

“I can’t believe that it’s taking you this long to solve the riddle,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe that you tried the Ravenclaw common room, of all the obvious places.”

“Obvious places are sometimes the right ones,” Hermione said, in a voice he remembered.

Harry kept his eyes on the parchment that held the text of the riddle and tried to resist the warmth that crowded through him. He didn’t know if he was in the right place to appreciate it yet. He didn’t know if he should count his friendship with Ron and Hermione as having been restored yet. He didn’t think he’d suffered enough. What he had done but walk up, offer a few apologies and a few hugs, and then have them argue with him again a bit more before they got back to working on the riddle?

_But maybe it doesn’t have to be all suffering._

Malfoy shifted beside him, and Harry shifted away before he thought about it. Then he took a deep breath and moved back. Malfoy had probably planted himself at Harry’s side on purpose so that any movement he made would be echoed in Harry’s body, but that didn’t mean Harry had to resent him.

Though he thought Malfoy was trying to say that he deserved to be part of Harry’s life, too, and deserved to have as much of his attention as Ron and Hermione.

 _I can’t, not right now,_ Harry thought, his eyes going to Ron. Ron still watched him with hope, and sometimes with puzzlement, as though he liked the sight of Harry standing there but didn’t know how it had happened. Harry wasn’t sure himself, for that matter. _It’s not right yet. They need a lot more attention until it’s put right._

“Not this time, since you’ve tried and it wasn’t,” Harry said. He stroked the parchment and stepped back. “I think we ought to think more about who made these riddles. Snape and Dumbledore. What were they thinking about during that last year? What was on their minds as being lost?”

“It still has to be something precious to Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff,” Ron pointed out, an anxious look on his face. Harry knew that meant he had almost forgotten the fact himself a few times and meant to make sure that no one else did. Then Ron paused abruptly and tilted his head. “Unless the note refers to someone else named Rowena and someone else named Helga.”

“It can’t,” Malfoy interposed quietly. “I’ve already checked the student records for Hogwarts during the years that Dumbledore was Headmaster. One student named Rowena, who died when she was in her seventh year, and no Helga.”

Harry gave him a single intense look that he intended to convey gratitude, though he didn’t know if it did. Malfoy responded with a raised eyebrow and a burning glance that made Harry clear his throat and glance down.

“It could be someone other than a Hogwarts student,” Ron said, dogged but not defeated.

“I don’t think so,” Hermione said. “It’s a good suggestion, Harry. What was on their minds as being lost during the war? Hogwarts, of course. Freedom. Security. Rights for Muggleborns.” Harry would have missed the quick look she cast at Malfoy if he wasn’t watching. “What else?”

“Something precious to Ravenclaw, at the same time,” Ron said.

“What fools we’ve been,” Malfoy said softly.

Harry turned to him. “What?” he asked. Malfoy was staring at the wall, and his fingers were stroking the table where they had laid the text of the riddle. His eyes were bright and at the same time heavy-lidded, as if he was waking up from a deep sleep.

“Of course they were worried about what we might lose during the war,” Malfoy said. “Think of the sacrifices that both Severus and Dumbledore made to keep me from killing someone. It was what made Severus swear that _poisonous_ Unbreakable Vow.” His eyes flared briefly, and Harry found himself wondering what Malfoy really thought and felt about the events of the year when he had been sixteen. It would be interesting to find out. “They didn’t want me to sacrifice my soul. But you could phrase that in another way. They didn’t want me to let the Dark Lord have dominion over the mind.”

“And Ravenclaw valued the mind,” Ron said, ending by punching one fist into the air.

“But where is the symbol of the minds that would have been lost?” Hermione asked.

And Harry knew, the answer coming home to him like a blow. He turned and met Malfoy’s eyes. Malfoy bowed his head in a shallow nod, leaving the speaking up to Harry.

“The _Slytherin_ common room,” Harry said softly.

*

Draco leaned back against the door of the Slytherin common room and tried not to think about the last moments he had spent here, all those years ago. Of course he couldn’t help feeling some of the same sensations—his heart pounding beneath his ribs, his chest aching with every breath he drew, and his shoulders rippling and flexing as if he would heave himself out the door and run at any moment—but he could control them. The memories were still out of his head. Indeed, his mind felt perfectly blank.

Potter paused beside him and gave him a single sharp glance. “Are you all right?” he mouthed.

Draco nodded and stared back until Potter shrugged and stepped up to join his friends. Then Draco clasped his hands together and squeezed, watching in academic interest as his skin strained. He had not expected a panic attack like this, and he was not sure how to handle it. Why would coming back to the Slytherin common room affect him so, when a visit to the school hadn’t?

But he thought he knew when he could risk a glance at the mantle and the couches and the single window nearby. Potter, Weasley, and Granger were standing together in the middle of the room and discussing something in low voices. They didn’t pay attention to him, or to the way that his eyes had fixed on one couch in particular.

He’d sat there and thought about what would happen to him when he left the walls of the school, to live in a changed world.

His parents were in disgrace. _He_ was in disgrace. He was desperately glad the Dark Lord hadn’t won, but that was a feeling of small comfort, really, when he thought about his own personal life. Yes, the Gryffindors had won and everyone else would live in harmony. But his future was no longer assured.

He had got past that moment. He had heaved himself to his feet and decided that he would study for a Potions mastery. And no one would get in the way, especially because he had Severus’s training behind him, and there would be no other student coming into the Potions program who would have the same advantage. He could do well there, for himself. And he had.

But now he was back in the same place, in the presence of the past, in the presence of the ghost who had made that decision. 

Draco bowed his head and clenched his teeth down on the inside of his cheek until he could taste copper. He licked his lips and surged forwards to join Potter again. He could get past this, yes. He _could_. He would.

He would be of some use to solving this riddle the same way that he had been of some use to himself in the years since he had made his decision.

“All right,” Potter was saying. “So what does Hufflepuff value that could have a place here?” He turned around and surveyed the room thoughtfully. “It has to be something that has a fairly concrete existence. After all, Snape and Dumbledore couldn’t count on it being a small object that someone could remove easily, or a quality to the room that only a Slytherin student could be familiar with. They didn’t know that they would pick a Slytherin to solve the riddles.”

“Severus would have insisted on it,” Draco thought to say. The air seemed to clamp his mouth shut, and he touched his neck and cleared his throat a few times. Weasley and Granger both ignored him, but once again, he got a sharp glance from Potter.

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean that he could have _depended_ on it,” Granger said. “So, yes, Harry, I agree. It has to be an object. That doesn’t make it any easier to _find_ , though.” She raked her fringe back from her forehead, or perhaps only some hair that was hanging in her eyes—Draco hadn’t paid enough attention to her before this to tell how her hair was styled—and sighed. “What could it be?”

Draco raised his head and turned it, trying to look at the room with unseeing eyes, the same way that any stranger would. But Weasley was doing the same thing, and having no luck. Perhaps it needed the eye of a friend after all. Draco cleared his throat again and sharpened his gaze.

The couches were too temporary. The walls were a possibility, in that they were as inflexible as the loyalty that Hufflepuff would have valued, but Draco didn’t fancy their chances of moving along them, tapping and searching, and trying to find the right combination of spells or taps by sheer luck. The floor was also a possibility, but Draco didn’t think they could dig into it without releasing water, something Severus would have taken account of.

Then his gaze fastened in one place, and he smiled without humor.

“Ravenclaw valued the mind, we decided,” he said. “Hufflepuff could be said to value a certain part of the body, too—the heart.” He let his finger stick out ahead of him and narrowed his vision down it, hoping that it wouldn’t become tunnel vision and he wouldn’t fall over.

The hearth.

Potter raised his eyebrows and then nodded slowly. “We haven’t gone close enough to be a threat yet,” he said, drawing his wand. “There could be a trap waiting there that will trigger and involve us in this fight to the death.”

“ _Wait_ a minute,” Granger said, her voice rising. “I didn’t hear you say anything about that. What trap? What fight to the death?”

“Dumbledore and Snape protected the riddles and the keywords with various guardians,” Potter said. His body was dropping into a hunting crouch, his eyes aimed straight ahead. Draco had never seen him look as intense, except inside the bedroom, and now he had to be almost grateful for the surge of feeling and memory that raced through him and drowned the other, inappropriate surge of old panic. “Water-snakes in the lake. A centaur with arrows that called your darkness to the surface in the Forest. That was what finally gave me the courage to come to you,” he added, with a smile over his shoulder at Granger. “I had to think about everything I’d been trying to put aside.”

“Oh,” Granger said softly, and stared at the floor. Again Weasley put the comforting hand on her shoulder, and Draco knew what she was thinking as plainly as if she had said it. _I thought you had come back on your own._

Draco rolled his eyes. It appeared that it didn’t matter how much Granger received, including gifts that she’d had no reason to think she would get. She still wanted more—wanted them given more willingly, or more generously, or in different proportions. Draco made a mental note to never get her a gift.

_Not that I need spend time around her once this is over._

And then he remembered his promise to Potter, or Potter’s promise to him, and sighed in vexation. He drew his wand, redirecting his attention back to the hearth. An enemy he could fight was looking better all the time.

“Stay back, Ron, Hermione,” Potter said, his eyes wide with excitement. “We don’t know what might come out of there.” He glanced back once, seemed astonished to find that Draco wasn’t at his side, and motioned him up to join in with one impatient hand.

Draco had never felt as tempted to chuckle in his life as he did when joining Potter. But he managed to hold it inside. The fixed expression on Granger’s face and the startled blinks from Weasley were perfect without his laughter.

“Ready?” Potter murmured. “It’s probably going to come straight from the center of—”

“The center of the hearth, of course, because that’s the place where the fire blazes and the heart of the common room is,” Draco finished, nodding his head, astonished himself by how easy it was to fall into communion with Potter.

Potter smiled at him and then lashed forwards with one arm, casting a spell out in front of him like that looked like a red fishing wire. Draco watched with critical eyes as it vanished into the spot in the stone where he remembered the great logs gathering. He wondered how Potter had known that, but then, the Gryffindor and Slytherin fireplaces might not be as different from each other as other aspects of the rooms were.

For a few seconds, silence hovered between them, or so it seemed. In reality, Draco could hear the harsh breathing of Granger and Weasley behind him, and the taut hum of magic through Potter’s wand, but he and Potter stood together in a bubble of silence nevertheless.

And then the stone wall at the back of the fireplace exploded inwards, and Potter turned and dipped a shoulder, seeming to catch the line of magic that spiraled back towards him and draw it into a spool.

Draco’s eyes couldn’t make sense of the beast that reared towards them at first, made of dazzling shadows and edges and eyes of flame, and then he recognized it and felt foolish. _A dragon. Of course. What else would you expect to come out of the fire?_

The dragon was smaller than any he had seen, heavier, its body looking as it if was made of carved stone. It landed on the floor with a thump and stared at them, neck swaying back and forth. The impression of being made of shadow and light, Draco saw, had come from its eyes and wings, both of which were illuminated from within by deep reds and golds, cooler greens and silvers.

“Does that resemble a real dragon in your eyes?” Potter murmured, taking a step back so that he was precisely beside Draco and could murmur into his ear more easily.

Draco shook his head. “Those scales are stone, though,” he said. “They’re going to be as hard as stone to get through, too.”

“I knew that,” Potter said.

Draco didn’t think it worth commenting on again, if that was the mood Potter wanted to be in. He lifted his wand and called a spell to mind that made the end of it fizz and spark. The dragon locked its eyes on them and flexed its claws in the floor, which resulted in long strips of stone ripping out and curling around its talons.

“For the honor of Gryffindor House!” Weasley said, suddenly and loudly, and leaped past both Draco and Potter at the dragon as if he had something to prove. _Perhaps he just feels the need to impress his wife,_ Draco thought, before his brain caught up to reality and he realized that he couldn’t let this simply happen.

“ _Weasley!_ ” he bellowed, and leaped after him. Potter was right next to him, his own cry wordless but so loud that Draco was convinced—and comforted—that they both felt the same thing.

The dragon jerked its head back and breathed on Weasley when he landed in front of it. The flames danced like ordinary fire when they first came into the air, but then locked into tangled, thorny curls of rock around Weasley’s legs. He crashed to the ground, still managing to fire off a spell that the dragon danced easily away from. And then he groaned, and his face turned pale. At the same time, Draco heard the dry snap that he knew usually signaled a limb breaking.

 _Trust Weasley to land in exactly the right way for that,_ Draco thought. The only good thing was that the git had shown them what the dragon’s fire could do, and Draco was no longer inclined to underestimate it.

Potter circled around to the side, eyes narrowed and brilliant, like the gemstones that the dragon’s wings resembled. He tried a spell that crackled out like lightning and seemed to have much the same effect, at least if the scorch mark on the dragon’s side was any indication. The dragon roared and spat another curl of flame. Potter lifted a Shield Charm, which blocked the fire, and then the pebble that the fire became, as it would have blocked any ordinary spell.

 _A second useful thing to know,_ Draco decided, and then launched the Dark Arts spell burning on his tongue, because getting in trouble with the Ministry through Granger’s good offices was the last thing he could worry about right now.

“ _Torno!_ ”

The dragon began abruptly to turn in a circle, its head flowing over its back, its wings tangling around its body. Draco grinned. “Focus on spells that aren’t meant to harm the skin!” he yelled over his shoulder at Potter. “They work just fine!”

Potter nodded and did something nonverbal that made the dragon lose contact with the floor. It twisted in the air, still caught in the torturing force of Draco’s spell, but also turned upside-down and flailed and jerked and tried to fly and spat its fire and in general made a fool of itself. Potter stepped back and gestured with his wand in a flourish to Draco, all too clearly indicating what he wanted: to see Draco take a turn.

Draco did, choosing a spell that, most of the time, would break the bones in a specific part of a victim’s body. This didn’t do the same thing—of course not, since the dragon had no bones—but it did crack loose a large part of the stone carapace on the head. That clanged to the floor and left a missing chunk in the neck, which bled a dark, oily liquid like heavy smoke.

Potter took it up again, and this time managed a spell that popped the dragon’s jewel-like eyes out. They rolled on the floor, and Draco heard a cry of disgust from behind him. It could have been Weasley or Granger or both at once.

He didn’t turn to look. What mattered was the peculiar joy thrumming through him and the laughter that bubbled out of his mouth when he listened—the laughter and the joy that came from the chance of working together with Potter.

As an experiment, he tried a spell that was supposed to press and preserve butterflies for Potions ingredients. The dragon tumbled over and over, writhing in what Draco would have said was pain if he didn’t know better, and then its wings flew out to the side. For a moment, they hovered in the air like the panes of stained glass windows. Then they crashed to the floor and became dust and powder, much the way that crushed insect wings would.

Potter was next, and he detached the dragon’s feet and turned them into useless ornaments.

Draco sheared its head off its body, and it continued spluttering and spitting fire from the broken neck for some moments before the strange life left it. It was only a statue now, and Draco lowered it back to the ground and shook his head, panting. Sweat soaked his forehead and tingled under his arms, and he felt far more exhausted than he would have thought he could from a bit of minor sparring. Perhaps this was the way that Aurors felt all the time.

He turned to the side, and Potter was there, eyes as large as moons, teeth bared in a smile as brilliant as the scowl he’d worn earlier.

“That was _wonderful_ ,” he said, and clapped Draco on the shoulder the way that he might have his best mate Weasley. “Well done.”

Draco reached out and caught the hand, pressing down on the wrist bone the way he had the other day when he’d wanted to draw Potter’s attention. He wasn’t a best mate, no matter what Potter might think at the moment and no matter how many battles they fought together, and he wouldn’t be treated like one.

Potter’s eyes widened, then drooped almost shut. He nodded as though catching the silent message Draco gave, and stooped nearer.

“Later,” he whispered. “We have to find the riddle and the keyword first.” And he turned away and took a step to the side, with the clear expectation that Draco would let him go.

Draco did, because he had no choice. But he kept his eyes on him, and he didn’t think it was his imagination that Potter began to search the hearth with his back always oriented on Draco, knowing where he was and what happened when he changed his position.

“A little help here, please?”

Draco started and whirled around. Granger was trying to wrestle her husband back to his feet and out of the stone coils of the dragon’s frozen flame, and looking exasperated and hurt at the same time, as if she thought that Potter should have hurried over to help her. Draco shook his head a bit and stepped up.

“That leg is broken,” he said, studying Weasley’s right limb with an eye that had a bit of Healer’s experience. His regular clients tended to come to him before they went to St. Mungo’s, trusting him to spot what was wrong more easily. “We should move him up to the hospital wing.”

“Yes, of course we should,” Granger said, and conjured a stretcher. She kept shooting little betrayed looks at Potter, though, who was on his knees and rooting among the ashes, and Draco wondered how much longer it would be before they heard about it.

“Found it!” Potter turned around, a large globe that looked like glass but couldn’t be cupped in his palms. Squinting, Draco could make out two small pieces of parchment tied together in what looked like a ball inside it.

“Good,” Granger said. “Then you can help us get Ron to the hospital wing.”

Potter’s face was full of chagrin at once. He cast the globe at Draco and dashed over to his best friend, muttering something that might have been an apology.

Draco didn’t care about that. What he cared about was that, when he reached out and pressed his hand hard enough into Potter’s arm to leave red fingermarks, Potter pressed back.


	7. Through the Fire

“Mr. Weasley will be fine.”

Harry nodded shortly. He didn’t trust the Ministry Healer that they’d hired to preside in the hospital wing for the moment nearly as much as he’d trusted Madam Pomfrey, but he reckoned there wasn’t much one could do to mess up a broken leg. And as far as the Ministry knew, Ron and Hermione had cooperated with them in the past few years and hadn’t turned against them in open rebellion as Harry had. They would have no reason to deny or delay Ron’s treatment.

“All right, mate?” he asked, as the Healer moved away and he could look down into Ron’s face, which was tight with pain.

Ron sighed and nodded. He reached out one hand. Hermione took it up at once and kissed the back of it, shaking her head. Her eyes shone with tears and with irritation, both. Harry thought she was trying not to react with a scolding now that the danger was past.

“It might mean that I can’t help you for a few days, though,” Ron said. “Are you going to search without us?”

Harry could feel Hermione glance at him, though he was no longer looking in her direction. Her fingers on Ron’s hand were suddenly still, her stare so pointed that he thought he might have cut himself on it if he turned his head.

Any answer that he could give to this would be fraught, so Harry chose his words carefully. “It will depend on how hard the riddle is, and if Malfoy and I think we could handle it on our own. We did manage most of the battle in the Slytherin common room on our own.” He looked at Ron’s leg and raised his eyebrows again.

“We want to be there,” Hermione said fiercely. “Promise that you won’t run off and do it on your own?”

“I don’t know what Malfoy might demand,” Harry said. He had the feeling he was using Malfoy as a shield, surely an unworthy thing to do, but on the other hand, he didn’t feel like being caught in a tug-of-war between his friends and Malfoy.

“It doesn’t matter,” Hermione said in a low voice. “Whatever he demands, all you have to do is refuse him.”

Harry bristled in silence. They were just becoming friends again; he wouldn’t let her order him around the way she had tried, sometimes, to do in the past.

Maybe Ron sensed that, because he sat up and said, “If you can’t promise us, mate, then will you at least _tell_ us before you go dashing off into danger again? Send us an owl, or Floo us. I’ll be here for the next day at least, if you can’t find Hermione.” He was glancing appealingly back and forth between them, and Harry knew that he was trying to make peace.

Harry hesitated, then nodded. It would cost him nothing to make that promise, and he thought he could keep it. He _did_ want to be close to his friends again, he told himself. He wasn’t going to leave them behind if he could help it. The problem was that maybe he couldn’t help it, and then he didn’t want to put up with the endless assignments of blame, either.

As long as they knew that he wouldn’t do that—and maybe he should tell them—then he could live with the telling.

“Fine,” he said. “Just keep in mind that it might happen suddenly, or Malfoy might go off and investigate on his own without telling me. Don’t scold me if it does.” He stared directly at Hermione, who gave him a little smile, as if the words had restored her confidence and cheer. 

“I don’t think he’ll do anything on his own if he has the option to work with you,” she said, with a tilt of her head. “I’ve never seen someone watch you like that, as if he had to figure you out and knew that he wanted to possess you at the same time.”

Harry coughed, feeling his face flush, and stood up. “I’m sorry this happened, mate,” he told Ron. “Rest easy.” He nodded to Hermione, not sure what he should say to her, and then left the room.

He went straight to the rooms in the dungeon that had been Snape’s. He wanted to see what the riddle was, at least, and start thinking about it in detail. If unexpected revelations came to him or Malfoy on the spot and meant they had to go on their solitary adventure, he wasn’t going to complain.

*

Draco had deliberately retreated to his rooms and decided to wait there for Potter. He wasn’t going to trail at the man’s heels. If he was sincere about wanting something more than a momentary, fleeting connection—if he wanted to do more than solve riddles and secure the future of Hogwarts together—then he would follow Draco for once.

Severus’s portrait sneered down from the wall, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to, when all his malice was contained in that sneer. Draco spun the cup of tea he had ordered from a house-elf hard enough to fling a few drops into the corners and responded with a raised eyebrow.

The knock came on the door.

It was Severus’s turn to frown, disconcerted. Draco reckoned his smile was bigger and more smug than the relatively minor victory warranted as he stood and crossed the carpet between him and the door, but he didn’t care. His fingers yearned towards the knob. It was a struggle to force himself to stand still for a few seconds, breathing slowly and indifferently, before he opened it.

Potter was there, and gave him a quick smile, starting to step in. “Have you opened the bubble yet?” he asked.

Draco leaned forwards and brought his hands into play, seizing Potter’s shoulders. He felt the ripple of cloth and the startled intake of Potter’s breath before their lips met.

Potter shuddered like a cat stretching and then reached up and put his hands in their own places on Draco’s shoulders. Draco leaned heavily against him. He had touched Potter more than the other way around so far—after all, Potter had been bound during their encounter in the Room of Requirement—and he had wondered if it would be strange to feel Potter’s hands.

It felt wonderful, at least in the same way that the ache in his cock felt wonderful rather than annoying.

Potter tried to steer him into the middle of the room, perhaps intending to press him against a wall or a chair. But Draco had no intention of upsetting the books, or of tipping over a cauldron where he was conducting important research, which seemed at least possible when kissing Harry Potter. He stiffened his stance and slid a leg forwards, hooking his foot around Potter’s left ankle.

Potter stumbled, and Draco caught him before he could fall completely and pressed his mouth into Potter’s neck. Potter arched up to him, twisting to the side, lips opening and closing. Draco took the invitation and plunged his tongue in.

Strong hands gripping and groping him, a tongue rising in answer to his own, and Potter sighed into his ear. He tried to say something, but the words were, understandably, muffled by their snogging. Draco turned him to the side, got him comfortably trapped against a high-backed chair, and proceeded to drive away Potter’s instincts to speak and ruin things with sharp, coordinated jabs of his tongue.

“That feels so _good_ ,” Potter said, tearing away his head at last and arching backwards. His voice was a groan. He was shifting restlessly, probing at Draco’s hip with his erection as if in imitation of what their tongues had been doing. “How can—how can you feel that good?”

“Your body responds to mine,” Draco said. He managed to get the words out calmly, which he thought was a credit to his self-discipline. He wouldn’t have blamed himself for simply throwing Potter down and taking him right there, with sharp thrusts and grunts of mutual satisfaction. “I noticed that when we had sex.”

“It responds to the chains,” Potter corrected him, an unfortunate stubborn look in his eyes, and suddenly acted as if he wanted to back away.

Draco stopped that retreat with a lazy circling of his tongue along the edge of Potter’s chin, and then closed his teeth down for a soft, punishing bite. He replaced his teeth so quickly with sucking lips, though, that Potter couldn’t have much to complain about.

“I don’t—I didn’t know you wanted to do things like this,” Potter said, when he could pull back. Draco moaned aloud; the red color of Potter’s lips against his dusky face demanded it. Potter flushed in what looked like pleasure and half-closed his eyes. “Kissing seems so _normal_ compared to what we’re going to—I mean, we might share.”

Irritated, Draco nipped at Potter’s neck harder than he needed to, and then cupped Potter’s hip and arse with a single greedy hand, grasping firmly enough to make him yelp. “I want you to stop using that word,” he whispered. “Normal has nothing to do with this. It has to do with longing and desire. As long as we both want this, what should make it abnormal?”

Potter closed his eyes fully. “Nothing is that simple, Malfoy,” he said, with enough coherency to prove that he was clear-headed despite Draco’s best efforts. Draco wondered what he should redouble, the assaults of his hand or mouth, and settled for resting his cock along Potter’s hip and simply leaving it there. It worked the way he had intended, with Potter’s eyelids trembling. “You know that. We might wish it was, but there’s still my friends, and a world out there that’s going to think of us in all the ways that we don’t want and we can’t escape.”

“They’ll think and talk of us, certainly.” Draco stroked Potter’s spine. It felt oddly prominent, and he wondered if that was simply Potter’s body type or if he didn’t eat enough. “That need not control the way we act in private unless we want to let it.”

Potter grimaced. “It has to. For me, it has to.”

Draco laughed harshly at him and leaned down to rest his teeth along Potter’s throat in much the same way he was resting his cock on his hip, not tearing or biting, but letting him feel the pressure. “Why? After what you said about standing up to your friends and claiming what you need, I had thought you were past this foolishness.”

“I can’t jump into bed with you again,” Potter said, and turned to the side, slipping away like a shadow.

Draco controlled his reaction to that. If he snapped or shouted or waved his arms about, Potter would win. He forced himself to watch with indifferent eyes while Potter smoothed down his hair and shook his head, as if that would banish all the deviant desires from his mind. Then he said, “It seems that you do very poorly at keeping your promises.”

Potter was facing him again in a moment, one of those rapid movements he so often performed without seeming to perform, his eyes wide and wary. “What do you mean?”

Draco took his time looking up and down Potter’s body. He could still make out the half-hard bulge at Potter’s crotch, and bit the inside of his cheek to avoid drawing attention to it. It would serve his purpose little if all he did was make Potter retreat defensively.

“You made promises to your friends that you would stand up for yourself and make them leave you alone,” he said. “You made a promise to me that you would attempt being with me. So far, you’ve kept neither, and the promises are only a few hours old. Not a good record.”

Potter curled his hands into fists, but the sharp retort that Draco expected didn’t come. “You have no idea how hard this is for me,” he whispered.

Draco paused. “Don’t I?” he asked. If Potter could be human and accommodating, Draco could be the same way. But he needed _proof_ that that was the source of Potter’s confusion and reluctance, rather than sheer stubborn adherence to outdated Gryffindor standards.

“You don’t.” Potter turned and sat down in the chair he usually took, throwing a wary glance at Severus’s avidly watching portrait for the first time. “Do we have to speak with him in the room?”

“Oh, he won’t betray us,” Draco said, and smiled at Severus over his shoulder. “I know too many secrets about him. But if you want him to go elsewhere, then he can.”

“You favor the living over me,” Severus said, drawing himself up with a stiffness that couldn’t conceal the flaring curiosity in his eyes. 

“Got it in one,” Draco said, and waited until he snorted and stalked to the side of the frame. Then he conjured a cloth to hang over the frame for good measure and sat down in the chair in front of Potter. For long moments, Potter remained still, but Draco could see his flexing throat, and knew a confession was coming.

“I know what this looks like,” Potter muttered. “But it isn’t that I’m turning my back on those promises. It’s that I’m trying to change in a single day everything I’ve thought about my sexuality. I mean—it wouldn’t bother you if we had sex when I wasn’t angry.”

“Not at _all_ ,” Draco said, and deepened his voice on the last word in a way that made Potter look up at him with parted lips and steadily flushing cheeks, until he seemed to catch himself by force and looked away, shaking his head.

“Oh. Um.” Potter swung his legs. “And yet, for the past few years, that’s almost the only time I’ve had sex. There were a few other times, too, but they were rare, and that was still just for the easing of bodily needs. I never thought I would have more than that, and going from resignation to acceptance isn’t easy.”

“I see,” Draco said, though inwardly he was stunned that Potter had never thought to look into _asking_ someone else if they might want more from him than the chains. He reached out and put his hand on Potter’s arm, though it meant he had to stretch quite a distance from his chair. Potter started and looked up with eyes that were almost guilty. “Very well. Then I would like to say that, yes, I would very much like to fuck you right now, chains or no chains, and will, if you’ll allow me.”

“God,” Potter said, and slumped weakly against the back of the chair.

“Is that a yes?” Draco asked quietly. He was not going to make a move until he knew that it would be welcomed. He could understand Potter’s doubts and hesitations, but that didn’t mean that he needed to put up with them more than necessary. If Potter wanted him, then he would have to ask.

Potter’s eyes blazed open suddenly, and he began nodding so hard that Draco might have feared he would break his neck if not for the support of the chair. “Get over here and fuck me,” he said.

Draco didn’t need to be told twice.

*

Harry almost thought he had forgotten how to have normal sex—no, wait, he should probably call it ordinary sex, because he didn’t think Malfoy would be pleased if he used the word “normal,” even in his head.

He automatically reached up as if there were chains on the back of the chair that he could attach his wrists with, and then brought his arms down and flushed as he realized there weren’t. Malfoy was on him by that point, his eyes focused and his smile vaguely frightening. To give his hands something to do, Harry began to unbutton his shirt.

Malfoy still used a forceful hand on his jaw when he wanted to tilt Harry’s head back and kiss him, which was fine with Harry, giving him one familiar thing to cling to in the sea of strangeness. He let Malfoy compress his mouth and stroke inside it with his tongue, and battled back in the cramped space he had. Then he dragged his shirt off over his head and forced Malfoy to back away briefly.

“See, you do have more control,” Malfoy murmured as he began to strip. His eyes were intense, and Harry found it hard to tell whether he was irritated or not. Harry decided to proceed as if he wasn’t and reached down to unbutton his trousers.

“So, are we going to Transfigure the chair into a bed, or what?” Harry asked. He had taken up Malfoy’s invitation because he wanted to and because he was sick of being afraid, but he had to admit that Malfoy’s rooms offered fewer opportunities for being comfortable than the Room of Requirement did.

“Of course not,” Malfoy said. “We’re going to have sex in the chair.”

Harry blinked. That wasn’t something he had ever done. “And how does that work?” he asked cautiously.

Malfoy tossed back his head and laughed. “You should see your face!”

Harry grunted and bent down to remove his shoes, which he only _now_ realized he should have done before his trousers were halfway down his legs. He didn’t care if Malfoy made fun of him, he told himself fiercely. He really didn’t. He had done worse than this in his time.

But did he want to go into the first session with the new lover that he had actually chosen determined to grit his teeth and bear it? 

No.

Harry took a few huffing breaths and shut his eyes. Then he opened them and looked at Malfoy’s hard cock, which his undressing had revealed, and let himself think of the way that it would taste and feel, sliding along his palm.

His mouth began to water, and his cheeks felt empty. Harry bit his lip and began pushing his pants and trousers down his legs again.

Malfoy gave him a smile that might have had a touch of relief to it, and jutted his hips forwards. “You didn’t get a proper look at me last time,” he said, when Harry stared at him. “I think you should this time.”

Harry coughed, his face flushing. He couldn’t remember the last time a lover had been that straightforward and sounded so unabashed and smug. Of course, most of the time the words he exchanged with his lovers were restricted to orders.

So he looked, letting his eyes trace the veins in Malfoy’s cock, the flushed color that alternated from pink to red on various parts of the flesh, and the way that it was wet and smooth at the tip. He discovered that he had reached down and started squeezing himself in a regular pattern without even noticing.

“Yes, that’s it,” Malfoy said softly. “That’s what I wanted.” He leaned forwards and covered Harry’s mouth with his, then reached out to help Harry get his clothes off. Harry found himself jumping when their fingers brushed against each other’s, as though Malfoy carried lightning in his hands. He pressed closer and moaned helplessly. Malfoy pulled back and shook hair out of his eyes, staring at Harry.

“You don’t need chains to bind me,” Harry said.

Malfoy made the chair rock by driving himself backwards then, which made Harry wonder, again, about how sex in a chair would work. But he felt it was better to give in and let Malfoy worry about that. _He_ was too consumed in the way that their cocks felt rubbing along each other and the helpless motions of his hips.

*

Just when Draco had thought that Potter understood nothing about sex-talk of any kind, he had produced _that_ line.

Draco was desperate to get his hands on Potter now, but he knew that he needed to hold back at least long enough to get undressed. And it would be better if he could maintain that cool mask he had in the first encounter, enough to give Potter orders in the tone he liked. It would do no good if _both_ of them were rushing into this with Gryffindor emotionality and sloppy kisses and clumsy hands. They would get off before they could even begin to feel good.

But it was _difficult_. Draco wished a spell existed that would have them both stripped and slicked up and him buried in Potter’s arse in seconds.

He settled for kissing Potter nearly hard enough to choke him and then pulling back to render him naked. Potter lay back in the chair, panting, legs spread wide, and he spread them wider when Draco managed to pull the last of his confining clothes away. He had no shame, or at least Draco could pretend he didn’t if he ignored Potter’s horribly flushed face and looked only at those parted knees, that jutting cock, and the hole that he could see revealed.

“I do think,” Draco said softly, “that you might lift up your legs, holding them behind the knees, and spread them as wide as you can.”

Potter stared at him, a tingling silence in the air between them, and for a moment Draco wasn’t sure if he would do it. They weren’t in the same kind of situation that they had been before, after all, and Potter had fought him there before giving in to his direct orders.

But although Potter shut his eyes and flushed so hotly he must have been on fire inside, he did reach down and lift his legs as Draco had suggested. Draco studied every detail of that pose: the whitening of his knuckles, the dents he made in the skin behind his knees as he supported them, the pulled-taut muscles in belly and legs, the way his cock bobbed softly with his uncontrollable trembling, and the hole beneath that, visible and waiting.

“Yes,” Draco said at last, hardly conscious of his voice. “That was what I wanted.”

He dropped to his knees and reached for his wand. Potter flushed some more, but he was staring down at Draco now with a look of enchantment that Draco would have been loath to disturb, so he didn’t make the sarcastic remarks that he could feel running through his head. He lifted his wand and whispered the lubrication charm instead.

Potter arched his neck and whimpered. Draco could see the gleam around Potter’s hole. It made him drive himself forwards, rutting into the chair-leg, before he gained control again and drew a deep breath.

“Slowly,” he said, and didn’t know who he was talking to. He reached out and stroked the oil down and around Potter’s arse, highlighting the area he would cover. Potter tilted his head to the side and gave a small, gasping, choking cry that a newborn animal couldn’t have bettered.

“Have you ever had someone do this?” Draco asked. Again his voice escaped him. He wouldn’t have said the words to a lover ordinarily; he would have assumed that they did have some sort of past experience, and one that he could better without effort. The challenge was the point, not the knowledge. But with Potter, it was different. “Have you ever had someone touch you like this before he fucked you?”

Potter’s eyes grew wide, and he choked on a bubble of panic for long moments. Draco knelt there, not impatient, and not stopping his slow stroke, and not looking away from Potter’s brilliant eyes. In a moment of absurdity, he realized that Potter still had his glasses on.

“No,” Potter said at last, and might have been about to cry.

Draco nodded, the knowledge flowing through him and leaving a great calm behind. He didn’t know why. It was all he could do to recognize and name emotions at this point, never mind know the reasons for them.

He dabbled two fingertips in the lubrication until they were thoroughly soaked. Potter’s legs had started to shake with the effort of maintaining the position, and Draco wanted him to keep it for a while longer, so he could see the expressions on his face.

He slid his fingers inside.

Potter gasped and blinked, jaw falling, glasses barely clinging to his nose. “Oh,” he said. “That part isn’t supposed to feel so good.” He sounded vaguely accusing, as if the fates were at fault for giving him a sensitive arse.

“But it does,” Draco said, and spread his fingers, and reached deeper. He was already dabbing up liquid with a third finger so that he could follow the first two. “Does this part feel good, too?” The third finger went in.

Potter looked away, but the trembling cords in his neck and the flush that crept lower every second told Draco he was still paying attention, no fear of that.

“Yes,” he said at last. It sounded as though someone had pulled the word through his teeth against his will.

Draco smiled in triumph. Now he would try something else, something that the coiling heat in his belly and the watching, remembering part of his brain both demanded. He withdrew his fingers. Potter snapped his head downwards at once, eyes wide in protest and lips parted in what could have been the beginnings of a snarl.

Draco stood up and leaned backwards, enough that he could aim his cock at Potter and leave no doubt about what he intended. Potter’s lips closed in a firm line, and his gaze was bright with lust and longing. Draco stroked himself with the three slick fingers; he didn’t dare do more, when he would have come with a touch.

“I want you to beg for it,” he said.

Potter’s eyes snapped up to him, and he sat so still for a moment Draco thought this might be the condition that would break their bargain.

But he didn’t move and didn’t remove his gaze from Potter. He had made the promise to himself that he would never give Potter what he needed again unless Potter showed some signs of actually _wanting_ it. Draco was never going to be anyone’s second best choice, or the best of a bad lot, or mere stress relief for someone who meant more to him than that.

If that was a sign of his own insecurities that should have been cured by now, so be it.

Now he turned to the side, displaying his cock and noting the way that Potter’s eyes fastened onto it. Potter was the one who had to make the decision. That ought to make up for any worries he had about the power Draco wielded over him.

*

Harry couldn’t swallow. His throat was too dry. He couldn’t move his eyes. They were frozen. He couldn’t even unhook his fingers from his legs, stand up, and tell Malfoy where to shove his pretentious demand. The orders locked his muscles into place.

He wanted…

It was just.

He had always been chained before when he did something that a lover ordered him to. He had always fought before he yielded. This time, neither was true, and that came roaring back to him as he sat there and stared at Malfoy and listened to what he’d demanded. 

The chains were a necessity, but also a guarantee. He could put the encounter out of his mind later and think that he was himself again, instead of ashamed about it, because he hadn’t had any _choice_. To get out of the chains, he had to do as he was told. And that was easy to rationalize in one part of his mind even as, in another, he knew that he was in the chains because he had wanted to be put there. He wasn’t a prisoner.

Now Malfoy was asking him to say that the only chains he was subjected to were will and desire, and he would have to choose.

Harry lifted his shaking legs higher and met Malfoy’s eyes. He had thought the gesture would convey how much he wanted this fuck, but all it did was make Malfoy narrow his eyes and tilt his head as though he were considering walking out of the room. That he stood there with his hand on his cock still and his breath rushing in and out of him reassured Harry not at all. He knew the strength of Malfoy’s will. 

“Say it,” Malfoy said, but only his lips shaped the words, so Harry didn’t actually get to hear them.

Harry shuddered. The fingers digging into the backs of his knees felt like hooks, or claws. He was propped on fishhooks, and he had to make his impossible decision—the first decision he had ever made about this that wasn’t at least nominally guided by someone else—while sitting on them.

_This is the last barrier. This is the kind of barrier that keeps you from keeping your promises, that holds you back from having the kind of life you want. You can walk out of here and go back to being normal and ashamed, but Malfoy isn’t going to help you do it, and you know why._

Harry bit his lip so hard that he thought a small trickle of blood had started down his chin, and then took a deep breath and nodded. “I want it,” he said. So little breath was behind his words that he knew Malfoy could claim not to have heard them, and he lifted his eyes and his voice—impossible to say which of those was more difficult—at the same time. “I want it. Please, please fuck me. Come on, Malfoy. I only want _you_.”

The words fell out of him like lead, but the space left within him was suddenly light and airy and full of the sun. Harry had thought he would feel hollow and empty. Instead, there was _courage_ there. The barrier was passed. 

Harry spread his legs wider, and repeated the words.

*

Draco had been trembling on the fine edge of his control ever since Potter started to whisper, but now it broke, and now he rushed forwards, pinned Potter’s legs awkwardly back against the arms of the chair, and slid into him.

Potter released a great barking grunt and ground his fingers down into the middle of Draco’s back, his face agonized. Draco slid further and deeper, not taking the time to apologize. The pleasure would be its own apology. He bit the top of Potter’s ear and murmured meaningless words to him. Well, he thought they were meaningless, but since he couldn’t take the time to listen to them, they might not be.

“Come _on_ ,” one of them said, and Draco didn’t know which one, but he thought the instruction good. He began to rock forwards, making the chair wobble and tip on its legs, and then to stroke more smoothly in and out of Potter.

The fingers on his back clenched down and then began to fall away. Draco lifted his head and managed to catch a single glimpse of Potter flopping back in the chair, arms off to the sides as though chained there, his eyes fluttering weakly, his legs dangling, only his hips jerking down to meet the thrusts.

Draco gritted his teeth and focused his gaze on Potter’s flushed throat instead. He would come if he looked at the whole picture too long.

Potter had begged him. Draco had never really thought he would. He could see Potter standing up and walking out of the room, breaking the trembling intensity between them, more easily than he could think of Potter surrendering and begging for him, for his cock, for Draco to enter him and _take_ him and—

That got him to the verge of coming again, not that the heat surrounding him wasn’t playing a part. Draco took a careful breath and began to rotate his hips, because Potter was too quiet and he wanted to hear him.

Potter’s eyelids fluttered and he looked up in what seemed to be confusion, eyes finding Draco’s while his brow furrowed. “What—what are you doing?” he breathed. “What you were doing was great, but this—”

Draco must have found his prostate. Potter’s head went back to flopping against the back of the chair, and his breath gave up. Then he was rutting even more enthusiastically against Draco, his cock flapping, his hands twisting back and forth against those invisible chains, his voice a mindless babble.

Draco took some delight in keeping his hands off Potter entirely this time, using only hips and cock to give him pleasure. He told himself that he would have time to kiss and stroke that red skin later. For now, he focused on the way that Potter’s hips bumped into his own, and the strain in his stomach muscles, and the uncoordinated jerks of his legs, trying all the time to get closer to Draco and closer to the sensations he was receiving from him.

Potter arched his neck back and froze at the top of the arch. Draco knew what was coming and abruptly sped up and shortened his thrusts, circling his hips hard enough to hurt himself. Someone else could have walked into the room at that moment, Severus could have come back into the portrait frame and spoken, and still Draco wouldn’t have been able to look away from Potter.

*

Harry _ached_ with the pleasure. He had his teeth clenched, he’d bitten his tongue, and his eyes allowed in blazing light and complete darkness only, both of which hurt. He could feel his toenails digging into the bottom of his feet.

When he came, it hurt.

But considering that he felt better right now than he had in months, years, _generations,_ he didn’t mind a little pain.

His head throbbed, his world spun, and he gasped and choked his way back to consciousness slowly, since it seemed far off. When he could breathe and see again, he lifted his head and realized that Malfoy still hadn’t come. Harry blinked and frowned. _Was I really that awful, that he couldn’t even orgasm when he was inside me?_

Any insecurities blew away like scraps of paper when he realized that Malfoy was buried inside him, smirking. He waited until he seemed sure that he had Harry’s attention and then whispered, “I wanted you as a witness to this.”

He began to rock again.

Harry shuddered. His nerves shot sparks of blue-white fire along the backs of his eyelids and through his spine and down his arse, and once again the pain began to mount. But he couldn’t have looked away from Malfoy or asked him to stop. He panted, and only realized a few moments later that he was panting in time to Malfoy’s thrusts.

Malfoy chuckled in the back of his throat and rotated his hips again. Harry hissed as Malfoy bumped his prostate, but there was no way that he could get it up again when he’d just come. He shook his head.

“Only want to make you feel good,” Malfoy told him, strands of hair dangling in his eyes, eyes themselves wide and blazing and blown, and then he tensed abruptly, clenched his hands in front of his chest, and began to move only from the waist down.

Harry had never before cared about making his lovers come. They always had, and _he_ had, and that tended to be the only thing that mattered. But he watched hungrily, greedily, now, for the way that Malfoy twitched and shuddered and dug his nails into his palms. He would have leaned forwards and lapped at the small trickles of blood he could see from Malfoy’s nails, but the angle wasn’t right for it. 

_I_ knew _we shouldn’t have had sex in a chair._

Malfoy seemed to lose the last of his orgasm and the last of his breath at the same time. He wavered, caught himself on the back of the chair with his hands, and then pitched forwards. Harry caught him against his chest and held him there, stroking his hair back so that he could see Malfoy’s bright eyes once more.

They weren’t bright now. They were shut, and Malfoy’s eyelashes splayed against his cheek in a way that made Harry _have_ to touch. He ran his finger delicately over one, and Malfoy sighed and stirred.

“Did that live up to your expectations?” he asked hoarsely. 

Harry waited until he _had_ opened his eyes and could look into Harry’s face before he responded. “More than any sex I’ve ever had,” Harry said. “And there were no chains, and it was—it was _powerful_.”

“That’s a good word,” Malfoy said. His smug voice dripped out of his lips as thick as cream. He reached up and ran a languid hand down Harry’s chest to his nipples, which he pinched. Harry hissed and thrashed, and a trickle of liquid ran out of his arse. Malfoy glanced down with an even more smug smile, as if he had forgotten himself that he was buried inside Harry until Harry reminded him. “A very good word,” he said. “Imagine what you’ll feel when I do tie you up with chains, which I know you’ll want at some point.”

Harry arched up, rutting against Malfoy’s stomach. It was an entirely involuntary movement, and useless, since he knew he wouldn’t be able to get an erection again no matter how much he wanted one, but that was Malfoy’s effect on him. He dropped back, limp and panting and exhausted, and murmured, “You’re a bastard.”

“Yes, I know,” Malfoy said, and forcefully kissed him, hard enough that Harry thought the inside of his mouth was at least bruised. “I think, by the way, that you should call me Draco. And think of me that way, as well. You should be on a first-name basis with someone whom you begged to fuck you.”

Harry flushed. “You’ll never let me forget that,” he said, starting to untangle the mound of limbs that they represented.

“Hmmm.” Malfoy licked at his nipple again. “No, I won’t. And I won’t let you forget what’s happened the next time you start making noises about being ‘normal’ and ‘ashamed’ of this, either.” He began to drag himself off Harry, but he did it without letting his gaze waver, so that Harry couldn’t look away from those challenging eyes.

Harry coughed. “I’m not going to change my mind about my sexuality all at once, you know.”

“Well, you’ve made a start by having sex in a chair,” Malfoy said, and turned away, running his fingers through his hair. That simple _gesture_ made Harry’s mouth dry, and he shook his head. _Why do I have it so bad for him?_ Malfoy’s body was lithe and handsome, but he wasn’t the most gorgeous lover Harry had ever had, and he was far from the most compassionate and sympathetic, which Harry had once thought was a requirement for him.

Then Malfoy glanced back at him with a devastating smile, and Harry’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth so he had to nod in response, and he knew.

Malfoy was the one who had the most effect on him. That wasn’t an answer for the deeper questions of _why_ and _how,_ but it could explain why one gesture from him made Harry want to kneel.

*

Draco watched Potter covertly from the corner of his eye as he cleaned himself up and dressed again. He remembered how different the git had seemed after the first time they fucked, the way he had smiled and laughed when he was striding out of the room. He was curious whether such a great change would come about this time.

There were signs of it, he decided. A fugitive smile flickered around the corner of Potter’s mouth—perhaps Draco should call him Harry, given his own dictate—and he looked at his hands and feet as if the sex had renewed them. And he stared often at Draco, then away again, perhaps trying to reconcile him with a future where he _didn’t_ storm out of the room and off on his own the instant he was done.

Draco was looking forwards to the next time he fucked Harry in a bed. If Harry tried to roll away from him and pretend nothing had happened, Draco knew some painful places to bite.

Harry turned around and froze when he realized that Draco was still naked. Draco bit his lip to keep from laughing and stared innocently back, then sat down in the chair he usually took. It was soft and made of a material that wouldn’t stain from semen or sweat, so Draco had no hesitation. “We should talk about the riddle,” he said. “Granger would surely complain that we’ve already wasted enough time.”

“But you—” Harry said, and then sat down and looked away in discomfort.

Draco wondered idly if he had misdiagnosed part of Harry’s response to him. Perhaps Harry was uncomfortable around the idea of sex in general as well as the particular kind he desired. “Yes?” he asked, with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re still naked,” Harry whispered, his cheeks flushing.

Draco was about to applaud him for noticing the obvious when he continued, eyes now on the floor, “And you should put some clothes on, because when you’re like that, I can’t think about the riddle. The only thing I can think about is you.”

Draco let a delicate moment pass before he began to think again. Harry was _far_ more adept at a certain version of romanticism than Draco had thought he would be.

“I will put on some clothes, then,” Draco said, stretching once and watching the way that Harry stared at him in frank appraisal before he turned his head aside. “Only for you.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, voice so low that it was difficult for Draco to hear him. Draco nodded magnanimously and reached down for the robes and other clothing he had discarded.

*

 

Harry didn’t know whether he wanted to cast curses or wander around the room with a huge and silly grin on his face. It made no sense, but then, it made no sense that Malfoy had fucked him and made him like it without chains, either.

_Should that be so surprising? We did make promises to each other that suggest it could happen._

Harry shrugged and kept his eyes determinedly fixed on his hands as Malfoy dressed. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, but it still was. He didn’t know what to do next, especially because he hadn’t had an experience like that before. They were either completely dedicated to stress relief or they were ordinary sex without even a mention of the bonds, like a few of the fucks he’d had with Bradley.

It was strange to think that he wouldn’t see Bradley again. Harry didn’t think Malfoy would want to share.

“Here, then.” Malfoy had the “glass” globe that Harry had taken from the fireplace in the Slytherin common room balanced in his hands. He lifted, bounced it thoughtfully on his palms for a moment, and then dropped it.

Harry winced, but the globe didn’t actually shatter when it met the floor. Of course not, Harry thought, and relaxed a little. The material would never have survived the heat of the fire or the weight of the stones if it was simply glass. “It looks like it’ll take something else to make it open,” he remarked, and knelt down.

Malfoy laughed, a high, cheerful sound that made Harry jerk. He could imagine Ron laughing like that, or Hermione. Not Malfoy. “I know that. We’ll probably both have to touch it at the same time to make it open, like the others. I wanted to see your face when I dropped it, and this way, I got to.” He smiled with a touch of viciousness and reached out to stroke the globe.

Harry shook his head. Perhaps he shouldn’t have expected Malfoy to change that much in such a short period of time, but the words had still disconcerted him. 

But he put his hands to the globe anyway, because to hold something like _this_ against Malfoy would have a waste of time. Harry knew that he would have many, many more insults to revenge in time against Malfoy, and it was just as well for him to get used to the git’s manners, or lack of manners, quickly.

The globe came unhinged along the top like a few Muggle Easter eggs Harry had seen, and then they were lifting out the entwined pieces of parchment. Malfoy undid the first and sneered slightly. “ _Hogwarts lake_ is the keyword to unlock the wards,” he murmured. “Of course.”

Harry didn’t see what the “of course” had to do with it, but he was holding the riddle, and he had better things to do than ask Malfoy what one sneer or another meant. 

_Fire above and fire below,_  
 _Rising while rooted,  
Bright in eternity_,  
 _Dark in memory._

Harry blinked and turned the parchment over. That seemed to be all there was. He supposed it wasn’t _that_ much shorter than the first riddle had been, but he had still expected something more substantial. He extended the paper to Malfoy, frowning. It was possible Snape had used some enchantment that would reveal hidden words or invisible clues.

Malfoy cast a few spells, but to no avail. “It seems this is our only clue,” he murmured. “One would expect a location like the rest, within Hogwarts grounds and not visited by many in the years since the school was closed. But ‘rising while rooted’ and the references to fire above and below make me wonder if this is within the Forbidden Forest again.”

“Why?” Harry asked. He’d never heard of fires or references to magical creatures that breathed fire in the Forbidden Forest, and he was sure he would have, from Hagrid if nothing else. Hagrid would have been thrilled beyond words if a dragon had lived near enough to them to be seen.

“Severus used an analogy with those of us in Potions who had trouble seeing the magical properties of certain trees,” Malfoy said, staring at him. “A tree combines all four elements. ‘It rises into the sky, it is rooted in the earth, it eats the fire of the sun, and it drinks from rain.’ Extend that a bit further, and one can say that a tree is close to the fire of the earth since magma lies in the earth. You never heard of that analogy? You don’t remember it?”

Harry gave a harsh laugh. “If you’re going to start complaining about the amount of attention I paid in Potions, we’ll be here all day.”

Malfoy studied him closely for a few moments, then smiled. Harry didn’t think it was the smirk or sneer he was expecting, though it had an edge to it. “You’re right. I suspect the visions I have had about you will prove true.”

“What visions?” Harry said, with a frown. Malfoy gave a small shrug and turned back to study the paper again. Harry leaned forwards and clutched his wrist, which at least had the merit of making him pay attention. “What bloody visions?” Harry insisted.

Malfoy sighed. “I’ve had flashes of you kneeling on the floor of my lab, your arms bound behind you and your face flushed with attention,” he said. “I had them even before I knew for certain that you liked to be bound.” He gave another smile, this time the kind that made Harry’s flesh shudder and feel as if it would melt from his bones. “I see they were prophetic in another way as well. Clearly, you need instruction in Potions.”

Harry coughed uncomfortably and turned his head away. “It isn’t—Malfoy, you wanker, this isn’t the time or place to talk about that.”

“All times and places around us are fine to talk about that,” Malfoy said. “Why not? We do not stop being ourselves because we are considering a riddle at the moment. We do not stop feeling our needs and our desires because we may need to put off slaking them.” He reached out in turn, but his touch on Harry’s wrist was too light, making Harry want to press his hand more firmly against Malfoy’s than Malfoy allowed at the moment. “I want you to accept that,” Malfoy added, and it sounded like an order.

Harry breathed deeply. He didn’t want to get into an argument about this right now, and he wasn’t going to. For fuck’s sake, they’d just slept together. It wasn’t as though he _owed_ Malfoy anything. 

“Later,” he said, and plucked the riddle from Malfoy’s slack hand. “So what would the last two lines mean, then?”

“Obviously, a place in the Forbidden Forest where something happened.” From the lightness and steadiness of Malfoy’s tone, Harry’s disagreement hadn’t affected him. Harry highly doubted that, but he deliberately didn’t look up in time to catch the expression on Malfoy’s face. “We would have to remember that it couldn’t be a moment specific to us. Dumbledore and Severus couldn’t know we would be the ones to track these riddles down.”

Harry grunted acknowledgment and looked up. “Assuming you’re right and something happened in the Forbidden Forest that we need to investigate, what are the best candidates for it?”

Malfoy waited long, lingering moments before he answered, as though to prove that he could look at Harry as well as anyone else could. “I think we should put Granger on that. She’ll go through records with a speed neither of us can match, and she’ll need something to do as she sits by Weasley’s bedside.”

Harry couldn’t stop his smile, though he knew it was reluctant. Well, that was all Malfoy deserved right now, anyway. “She’ll like that, and it’ll help take her mind off Ron. Thanks, Malfoy.”

“I didn’t do it for her sake,” Malfoy said. “I did it for yours. You seem to have a need for others to feel consideration for your friends, as if they were delicate striplings, though I have to admit that I don’t know why.”

Harry ground his teeth and held back his slowly rising irritation. He had been honest with Malfoy, and this was what it got him. But he had to think that what they had—he thought he could call it bondage more honestly than a bond—was stronger than a petty argument. Someday it would be, anyway. “It’s not their delicacy. It’s that I’m just reconciling with them right now, and it wouldn’t take much to tear us apart.”

“You weren’t as firm in your interview with them as I imagined you would be.” Malfoy had lazy eyes, deceptive eyes. Crocodile’s eyes. “You didn’t demand everything I’d thought you’d demand. Why is that?” 

“Because you’re you, and not me?” Harry asked in exasperation. He didn’t know what to say about this. Malfoy wanted to discuss this subject now—why, exactly? And why was it his concern? Harry’s efforts to secure his friendship with Ron and Hermione could proceed without oversight from Malfoy. “Because we think it’s reasonable to ask for different things?” he added a moment later, in a slightly softer voice, when Malfoy simply continued to gaze at him. “Seriously, Malfoy. It’s not that complicated.”

“It is,” said Malfoy. “When what they do affects you, and that affects me.”

Harry sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I promise that I wouldn’t refuse to have sex with you because of something Ron and Hermione said to me. So that’s settled, isn’t it?” He picked up the riddle again.

Malfoy reached out and hooked his hand beneath Harry’s chin, turning his face back and forth as if he were seeking the answers to hidden questions in it. Harry froze and glared at him. It was hard to maintain that glare against Malfoy’s patient, searching look, and the questioning gleam in his eyes.

“You have no idea what I’m really like,” Malfoy whispered. “You have no idea what I want from you. It’s more than sex. It’s more than not walking away at the end of a fuck, though that _is_ nice compared to what happened the first time. I wish to know you, and what affects you, and for you to do the same thing with me.”

Harry bit his lip, feeling himself flush. He had known—well, maybe he’d known—that things like this would happen if they had an actual relationship. But he hadn’t _counted_ on it. Or he had thought Malfoy would wait a while before engaging in it. Malfoy didn’t seem soft or Gryffindor enough for that.

“I want to ask for the harder things later,” Harry said, telling the truth. “It was the first meeting. I thought I’d want to be demanding, but seeing their eyes and the way they reacted to me…that was enough for that moment.”

Malfoy considered him in silence, as if evaluating the answer. Then he nodded and let Harry go. “I’ll write down a list of suggestions that Granger might want to look into,” he said. “Though I’m sure that she’ll discover more than enough on her own.”

Harry nodded back, more relieved than he could say that Malfoy had accepted his explanation and dropped the interrogation mode he’d been using for a few minutes. Then he paused and licked his lips. He felt as if he _owed_ Malfoy something for dropping it, though Malfoy would probably—well, might—say he didn’t.

He leaned in and kissed Malfoy briefly on the mouth. Malfoy muffled an exclamation against his lips, then reached up and caught his hair, holding him in place as he thrust his tongue determinedly past Harry’s lips. Harry accepted it and snogged him gently, pulling back when Malfoy tried to insist on more.

“Thank you, Draco,” Harry said.

Malfoy—Draco who was to be—flushed and slowly inclined his head, not looking away from Harry’s eyes. Harry shuddered, but not in revulsion. That clinging gaze felt more intimate, in some ways, than Draco’s hands on his body.

*

Granger seized the list of suggestions from Draco’s hand with a crow of glee, which Draco had been sure she would, and then scanned it from top to bottom with a quick flick of her eyes. Although she looked up at him immediately after, Draco was sure she had memorized them already. “What am I looking for?”

“Events that occurred in the Forbidden Forest since Dumbledore was Headmaster,” Draco told her, glancing once at Weasley, asleep in the hospital bed. He looked disgustingly healthy. He ought to be up tomorrow, Draco thought. There was no need for as much worry as Granger was showing. “Preferably, events that also occurred since Professor Snape came to teach here. Something dark that would have impacted both of them.”

Granger nodded seriously, considered the list again, and started to write notes down on the margins of the paper. Draco was glad to make his escape. He wanted to find Harry again and carry on a more interesting discussion.

Of course, since that was what he wanted, he was prevented from carrying it out. He met Covington on the stairs coming down from her office, and she smiled and held out an arm as though they were the best of friends and it was trivial for her to bar his passage. “Potions master Malfoy. I must speak with you.”

“I have nothing to say about Potter,” Draco murmured peacefully. “Or the philosophical reasons that Potter left the Ministry. You are better served by taking those up with him, as I already suggested.”

“I know that.” Covington had hawk’s eyes suddenly. “I wish to speak to you about a matter of some import to the both of us.”

Draco waited. He did nothing so casual as lean against the wall, and nothing so defensive as to fold his arms. Why should he give an enemy anything definable about his state of mind? Draco had never been a connoisseur of handing over weapons that someone could use to stab him, though Harry was.

_That is something else we will have to work on._ Draco had no intention of watching Harry hurt himself again and again. He might not be able to _order_ him to stop it—Draco didn’t yet know how much control he had outside the bedroom, if any—but he would offer sarcasm, suggestions, gentle advice, and anything else that might stand a chance of making an impression.

“Do you know,” Covington asked the air, “how fragile the reputations of Potions masters may be? Constant discovery and research is necessary to maintain them. I wonder what would happen if it turned out that some of the discoveries made by a Potions master in the last few years were fraudulent, claiming the credit for others’ work. I wonder what the people who pay those discoveries attention and send the Potions master letters of adulation, praise, or argument would do.”

Draco felt the breath catch in his throat for a moment. This was a tactic that he hadn’t thought Covington would take, partially because he didn’t know that the Ministry bothered to keep up on the activities of Potions masters. Their incompetency at everything else was so great, why would they?

Then he smiled and said, “It would be a disaster for him. Even if he managed to clear his name, there would always be lingering doubts about his priority for the next discoveries. He would become involved in petty disputes when he should be moving forwards, making his name known in other areas and new fields. And those who chose to ally with him would receive withering scorn. Posterity might not know or remember him. Names of potions or histories of brewing with his name in them might be changed.”

“I am glad to understand the consequences,” Covington said, and smiled back at him. “It’s a subject that I’ve been interested in, but I never had enough time to study the specifics.”

“I find that I make time for subjects I am truly interested in,” Draco said. “One might never know, otherwise, the basic concepts or whether someone had got there first and claimed credit for what one wanted to study.”

Covington’s eyes went slightly wary. She didn’t know where he was leading the analogy, and it showed. “Of course,” she said. “One would not want someone else to snatch the prize one dreamed of winning.”

“I study people as well as books,” Draco said conversationally. “I have several such studies in progress right now.”

“Do you?” Covington gave him a pleasant smile. “I hope you will realize that some people’s characters are a reflection of what most interests them and what institutions they serve, rather than of their worth as individuals.”

“Such constrains are well-implanted in my mind,” Draco reassured her. “This study is very old for me, although the subjects of the study aren’t.”

Covington nodded. “Well, then, I can safely leave you to it. I trust that you’ll let one subject of your study know if another one is about to come into conflict with him.”

Draco shrugged with one shoulder. “I might do that if I thought it necessary. Or I might let it happen. I must do some experiments in all the fields of study I undertake, after all. It’s essential for my nature as a Potions master. Watching explosions and collisions teaches me more about my subject than all the descriptions in a textbook ever could.”

“I wish you luck,” Covington murmured, and then turned and went up the stairs again with so much grace and conviction that Draco could have told himself he’d imagined the momentary flash of fear in her eyes.

But he knew he hadn’t.

*

Harry looked up when he heard the door open. He’d agreed to remain here while Draco took the list of suggestions up to Hermione because—well, because he wanted to avoid seeing Hermione and Ron with the flush of sex still on his cheeks. Draco had agreed with nothing more than a curious glance, and if he guessed what the motive for the action was, he didn’t seem inclined to deprecate it.

Harry had entertained himself by studying the alterations to Snape’s rooms and comparing them with his memories of the bastard the man had been. He never would have allowed this if he was still alive. Harry wondered if he should think of this as latter-day revenge or not, and if it was psychologically unhealthy to do so. That led him further away into other questions, and he hadn’t noticed time passing.

Now, when Draco gave him a direct look and Harry glanced down at his watch, he realized it was late evening. He rose to his feet with a cough. “I should be getting back to my rooms in Hogsmeade,” he said.

“Yes, you should,” Draco said, in a light, deceptively pleasant tone.

Harry stiffened. He hadn’t been “with” Draco for long, and already he recognized one of his favorite tactics: saying nothing on the surface, implying everything beneath, and irritating someone so badly that they _had_ to ask what he was talking about.

“What do you mean?” Harry snapped. “Say what you mean.”

“I thought I had.” Draco stepped past him and started to arrange a pile of papers Harry had glanced at earlier but thought nothing of. They were covered with equations and directions, and that probably meant they were about potions. Harry and potions had an agreement: he stayed on the other side of the room, and they didn’t lunge viciously out of their vials at him. “You should return to your rooms. The Three Broomsticks will serve dinner soon, and you look as if you could use some more to eat.”

Harry let one hand fall defensively to rest on his ribs before he dropped it and flushed again. He told himself that he had _so_ grown up past the near-starvation the Dursleys tried to inflict on him, and it didn’t matter what Draco thought or said, that childhood mistreatment didn’t show now. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said, and started to edge past Draco.

Draco turned around and gave him a faint smile, an enigmatic one, as he leaned against the table where the papers were now neatly piled and cocked his head.

Harry ground his teeth. He wouldn’t be tricked into responding. He would walk out the door, up the path to Hogsmeade, into the Three Broomsticks, and eat his dinner and go to bed on time like a normal person.

_Normal._ That word tolled in the back of his mind, and Harry remembered the conclusion he had come to this morning: that he wasn’t normal and would just have to get used to living with that. Draco’s voice snapped in his head at the same time, telling him to stop using that word.

In another life, that reminder would have been another reason for him to walk out. He didn’t need to do everything Draco said just because that was what he did when they had sex.

But he didn’t want to resist what could possibly be good advice just because of his stubbornness, either. And Draco’s expression was driving him mad with curiosity. He _had_ to learn what Draco thought he should do.

He turned around with a huff and folded his arms. “Well? What do you think I should do instead of going back to Hogsmeade?”

“Did I say that you should do anything?” But Draco stepped forwards with an alacrity that told Harry he had indeed been waiting for just this. He wrapped his fingers around Harry’s wrist and turned his hand back and forth as if admiring the different patterns of marks his fingertips could leave. “I think it would be more comfortable for both of us if you stayed in my bed tonight.”

“Your bed probably isn’t big enough,” Harry retorted, seizing the first excuse that came to mind.

The smile Draco gave him was deep, and dark, and lovely. “You haven’t seen it yet. An unanticipated benefit of having fucked in the chair.”

Harry felt himself flush again. It was one thing for him to _think_ words like “fucked,” but Draco appeared to say them effortlessly. Harry didn’t know whether to feel silly and embarrassed or excited that he could do so. Probably neither response was appropriate.

He tried for a coolness that matched Draco’s tone. “I need some time and space from my friends. Maybe the same thing applies to you.”

Draco leaned closer, and Harry swayed towards him without even thinking about it. “I would ordinarily let myself be persuaded by that,” Draco murmured, “except that I know you have a past pattern of retreats from your lovers. I don’t want to give you the chance to begin that again. Stay with me tonight. You can go back to Hogsmeade tomorrow night, assuming we are unfortunate enough not to solve the riddle tomorrow.”

Harry exhaled. He wanted to say he wouldn’t retreat this time, but Draco had no reason to believe him. He could say that he wanted to be alone after the tumultuous events of the day, but that wasn’t really true. He wanted to think, but if he was by himself, he would brood instead. Events of the past few years had taught him brooding was no substitute for thinking.

Draco ran the fingers of his free hand lightly down Harry’s arm, from elbow to wrist.

Harry shivered. He did want to get used to this, he told himself. And he would _have_ to get used to this if Malfoy insisted on being so free with all the touching.

“All right,” he muttered. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to spend each night pressed against your body.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Draco said, while his eyes laughed from deep down. He reached out and drew Harry against him, holding his wrists with a grip that Harry thought would have tightened immeasurably if he had tried to break away, but, just at the moment, felt rather pleasant. “I would expect that you’ll be bound to the headboard some of the time, and I may choose to press against you or not, as I like.”

Harry wrenched away instinctively. Or rather, he got one wrist free, and then Draco seized the other one exactly as Harry had thought he would, his frown light and scolding. “I wouldn’t do such a thing, Harry, if you want to go on feeling my touch,” Draco murmured. “I can understand your motives for an immediate rejection, but I won’t take it well.”

Harry took a deep breath. It wasn’t—he didn’t know how he could explain it. He wanted to be bound when he was sleeping—not an idea that he’d considered before, but one that sent sparks dancing along his nerves. But how he could stand to have someone else do that to him? How could he stand to be with someone who would look at him in the daylight and _know_ that it was happening?

But it was find a way to do that, or give up being with Draco completely. Draco could tolerate anything but his cowardice and the desire to be normal.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll come with you for tonight, and we can see later if we’ll have to do anything else.”

Draco drew a hand over Harry’s throat, along his collarbone and up, with his eyes so dark that it was hard to read them. When he spoke, his voice was thick and languid. “I am pleased.”

Harry decided he might as well flush, since there was no one else in the room to see it, and followed Draco into the bedroom without even a prompting tug on his wrist. 

He _did_ look to make sure that the portrait frame was still covered up before he followed Draco, though. There was a limit to the show that he wanted to put on for others besides Draco.

*

Draco swam out of sleep with the vague conviction that something was wrong. Only when he turned over did he realize that the wrongness was a change from what he had done and how he had slept since he came to Hogwarts. And in this case, it was a very great rightness instead, although still a change.

Harry slept, head bowed on the pillow as though he was surrendering to some invisible enemy. He hadn’t rolled far away from Draco; he hadn’t tried to stand up during the night and leave the bed, unless he had stepped out briefly for a trip to the loo. Draco smiled and ran his fingers along the part of Harry’s neck where his hair ended.

He felt the small shock jolt through Harry’s body as he came awake. For a moment, Harry too-obviously tried to remember where he was, who he was with, and why, and then he blew out his breath. Leaning to look over the side of his face, Draco could see that he had his eyes shut.

“Do you do this often?” Draco asked idly, continuing to play with Harry’s hair. “Wake up in strange beds?” That would be another thing changing soon, if it was the case, but he didn’t think it was, given how uptight Harry had been in the past about his particular needs.

“No,” Harry said. “You wanker.”

Draco grinned. “But you didn’t know where you were for a fraction of a second,” he said. “I heard.”

“You _would_ be the one to notice something like that,” Harry said tiredly. He rolled over and held out his hands. “Will you untie these, please?”

Draco took a moment to admire his handiwork, instead. Harry’s hands were tied together with a series of black, knotted cords, so thickly wound that in some place they completely hid the skin beneath. The appearance was deceptive, however; rather than actual cords, Draco had enchanted an old pair of gloves to wear the cords and act as embracing, limiting bonds on Harry’s movements. He didn’t want to cut off blood to Harry’s hands during the night, because he would have to deal with the complaining about that in the morning.

He glanced up. Harry glared back at him, though of course he was flushed, and of course he looked away when Draco held the stare.

“Did you like that?” Draco asked softly.

“I—don’t know,” Harry said, which was a better response than the blustering one about normality that Draco had feared. Harry stared at the ceiling, brow furrowed, and then shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s something that I would want to happen every night,” Harry said. “As routine. But it’s the first time that I’ve ever used bonds like that when I wasn’t already killingly angry. Maybe I could become used to it over time.” He turned and extended his hands to Draco more commandingly this time.

Draco undid the gloves and then massaged Harry’s fingers for a while, not letting him pull his hands back until he was sure there was no damage. When Harry began to flush and fidget, Draco summoned a house-elf to give them breakfast. 

“What do you like in the mornings?” he asked Harry. Harry sat on the edge of the bed with his hands tugging at his hair. Draco bit his tongue against the temptation to tell him that he would neither look better nor be smarter if he pulled all his hair out.

“Like?” Harry glanced up. “Oh. For breakfast. Toast is fine. And eggs.”

Draco nodded and gave his own somewhat more substantial order to the house-elf, then turned around and sat with his legs folded beneath him on the bed while he watched Harry. Harry had insisted on wearing a shirt and trousers to bed last night, but for all that, he was still lovely, with his rippling muscles and wild, wary movements. “Something on your mind?” he asked. He didn’t know if Harry would be able to voice his concerns even if he had them, but Draco thought it only right to ask.

“I’m thinking about that riddle,” Harry muttered. “I have to assume that Hermione didn’t find anything new during the night, or she probably would have burst in on us, waving the parchment and chattering.”

With a sigh, Draco resigned himself to discussing how to free Hogwarts from those protective wards. It was, in a way, what they were here for. “Yes, I think you’re right. It may not be the Forbidden Forest. There are other trees on the ground.” He paused and cocked his head. “Didn’t something happen during our third year near the Whomping Willow?”

Harry appeared to levitate into the air as he turned, so that he ended up facing Draco without having moved his legs. “ _Yes!_ ” he breathed. “I can’t believe that I would have been so stupid as to miss that.”

“Well?” Draco gave him a patient look.

“The Whomping Willow hides an entrance to the Shrieking Shack,” Harry explained, his hands in constant motion, one still combing through his hair, one waving randomly through the air as he explained. The elf reappeared with their tray of breakfast, and Draco accepted it and dismissed the elf while he kept a keen eye on Harry. “We cornered Wormtail there during our third year and forced him to admit that he’d betrayed my parents—”

“We?” Draco interrupted. He handed Harry a plate of toast and eggs, which he accepted but only balanced on his knees instead of eating.

“Ron and Hermione and Sirius and Remus and I,” Harry said in distraction. “Everyone thought that Sirius had betrayed my parents, but they changed Secret-Keepers at the last minute, and it was Wormtail. Peter Pettigrew,” he explained, because he had finally seemed to understand the message behind Draco’s patient look.

Draco nodded. He had heard the Dark Lord speak of Wormtail a few times, but he had never been sure if that was the same person as Pettigrew or not.

“We were coming out with Pettigrew, but it was a full moon night, and Remus started to change, and Pettigrew escaped,” Harry said. “Snape was there too. That could qualify to make the event a dark memory. I know that—seeing Remus there would have frightened him.” He sounded oblique, and his eyes were shifty. Draco sighed. He would tell Harry later that he wasn’t a prefect anymore and couldn’t get Harry in trouble for things that had happened to violate Hogwarts’s rules a decade ago. “The tree would be the place where he remembered all of that. Probably.”

“Hmm,” Draco said, and decide that he should let it go for now. He had plenty of time to get to know Harry, after all. “The Whomping Willow is a good choice. We’ll investigate later, when Weasley gets out of the hospital wing. Is there anything else that comes to mind? I must admit that the third line of the riddle troubles me.”

Harry looked up from a mouthful of eggs, which dangled past his teeth like a chewed moustache. “The third line?”

Draco gave him a tolerant look—it was so obvious that Harry was trying to hide his lack of memory—and said, “Bright in eternity. The problem with guessing any tree for this part of the riddle is that it doesn’t fit. Trees are mortal, and die. I don‘t know what that part of it means, but perhaps Granger will have a suggestion for us.”

Harry nodded and returned to his meal. Draco ate as neatly and quickly as he always did, not taking his eyes off Harry. Harry began to fidget long before Draco had finished, and at last looked at him with a rather desperate expression and muttered, “Do you have to examine me all the time?”

“Examine you in what way?” Draco inquired, patting delicately at his mouth with the napkin.

“I just—you’re looking at me like everything I do matters,” Harry muttered, and set his plate aside. It vanished at once, telling Draco that the house-elves were watching them. He didn’t think the elves reported to Covington, though, so that was fine. “I’m not used to that. I spend a lot of time on my own, when I’m living in my house in the Muggle world.”

Draco smiled. “If it makes you uncomfortable, then we’ll work out a compromise,” he said. “But lovers do usually look at each other.” He stretched one arm up and turned his neck, so that Harry could have a fair peek.

Harry’s cheeks turned pink, and he fumbled his fork onto the plate. Draco thought it was adorable. He didn’t know that he would have thought that of anyone else, but then, he had gone through rather unusual exertions to win and keep Harry, which he couldn’t imagine applying to other lovers.

_To no other lover ever again, if I have done my work right._

“I—I’m not used to it yet,” Harry said, and Draco reckoned that was fair. He wasn’t used to this yet himself, either, and he didn’t want to drive Harry away before they had a chance to get on an even footing.

“Fine,” he said. “Tell me when you are.” He winked at Harry and finished his breakfast, dividing his attention between Harry and the riddle in his head. The more he thought about it, the longer he was certain that it wasn’t a tree.

But there seemed so few other things that fit the clues, and Severus had spoken so often of the tree as a perfect symbol of all four elements, that Draco thought he would keep that observation to himself for now. Granger would certainly have more than enough to say when they met up with her this afternoon.

*

“I’ve thought about it, Harry, and I think this is harder than the previous ones.”

Harry had to refrain from rolling his eyes. Of course Hermione would think that, because she wasn’t the one who had solved the last riddle; he and Draco had.

Then he told himself not to be so uncharitable, and leaned over to look at the list of suggestions she’d placed on the table beside Ron’s bed. Ron was up, looking much more cheerful than he had yesterday, and eating a frankly disgusting breakfast from the tray on his lap. Harry tried to avoid being splattered by flying food as he squinted thoughtfully at the suggestions.

The Whomping Willow was on there, a few names that Harry didn’t recognize—Hermione explained that they were precise locations in the Forbidden Forest that she’d learned about when she first came here to be a professor—and several classrooms. Apparently some of those had decorations that Hermione thought might be what the riddle was referring to. Harry couldn’t dispute that, not when he didn’t have better ideas himself.

“Could you stop doing that, Malfoy?”

Harry tensed and raised his head. Ron’s voice didn’t have the extremely hostile tone he thought it would have a few days before, but it was still loud enough and rude enough to make Harry anticipate a pitched battle.

Draco was sitting on a chair beside Hermione’s, his face abstracted. He had already studied her list, and Harry didn’t think he knew any better than Harry did which was the right one. He wasn’t doing anything in particular, Harry thought, staring off into space while his fingers twitched now and then. 

Except that his hand was resting on Harry’s hip, stroking up and down in the same absent manner that he might stroke a dog.

Harry coughed, turned red, tried to decide if it was the manner of stroking or the fact that Draco was touching him at all that had made Ron angry, gave up, and said, “It’s all right, Ron. I don’t mind.”

Draco came back to the conversation then and lifted his eyebrows. His hand closed down on Harry’s hip for a moment in a possessive gesture, as if he assumed that someone would come around the corner to drag Harry away. It loosened almost at once as he began to smirk, but that little moment of lost control had reassured Harry. Draco wasn’t as perfect and flawless as he looked. He might still, as silly as it was, assume that Harry would leave him. 

Harry needed that, to know that he wasn’t less important to Draco than Draco was to him. He might be trying this new business of having a regular lover, but he didn’t intend to give himself up for anything but a full-time commitment in return.

“Oh, Weasley, are we doing something that offends your delicate sensibilities?” Draco asked in a croon. “I forgot that you’ve probably only been with one person, and then you were a virgin until marriage.”

“ _Malfoy_ ,” Hermione said in a deeply annoyed manner, and glanced at Harry. He knew the silent look was a plea to control his errant lover. He sighed and turned to touch Draco’s hair and his chin. The touches got Draco’s attention at once, which was what Harry wanted.

“Let it go,” Harry mouthed.

Draco regarded him with such an intense stare that Harry thought he had drifted off into contemplation again. But then he shook his head. “No, why should I?” he asked loudly. “He’s bothered by something normal and natural, although he would think it strange if we objected when he snogged his wife. I’m doing less than that. He can ignore it if he wants. I’m not stopping.” And he immediately began to stroke Harry’s hip in large, suggestive motions that included his leg. Harry caught his breath.

“We’re supposed to work together,” Hermione said, voice a little shrill. “You’re making that harder, Malfoy. It’s not such a big thing that Ron’s asking you for.”

“It starts out that way, and it gets bigger,” Ron muttered. “I know him. I know the liberties that he’ll end up taking.”

“ _Stop it._ ”

Everyone fell silent, blinking. Harry looked around for the iron-voiced person who had decided to interfere, half-thinking that it might be Madam Pomfrey, who would want silence and peace for Ron as he recovered.

Then he realized it was him, and that even Draco was regarding him with lifted brows. Harry coughed and accepted the fact that he had intervened, and that meant he had to keep going. He sat up straighter, captured Draco’s hand, and carried it into his lap, where he held it. That ought to satisfy the impulse in Draco to connect with him while at the same time stifling Ron’s objections.

“I came to you because I want you for my friends,” he said. “I brought Draco along because he’s my lover. I would have a harder time leaving him right now than I would leaving you, when our reconciliation is so new. Ron, if it bothers you that much to think about what I do in bed with Draco, look away.”

Ron opened his mouth and then looked away. His jaw was clenched tight with humiliation, and Harry winced, sorry for it. But he took a deep breath and refused to relent even when Hermione looked at him with pleading eyes. What could he say? He wanted to be with his friends again, to joke as they used to, and perhaps he would be able to help them free Hogwarts from the Ministry’s clutches.

But no matter what he said, something about his sexuality always seemed to bother them. That it existed, that he was possibly sleeping with other people in a certain way because of psychological issues, that he had chosen a certain lover…No matter what he said or how much he gave in, he didn’t think Ron and Hermione would be satisfied. It would be best if they agreed beforehand on what they would disagree on and then didn’t bring the subject up again.

Ron finally shut his mouth and whispered something to Hermione; close as he sat, Harry couldn’t hear it. She took his hand and nodded, then looked back at Harry alone and said, “We’ll investigate several of these places today. Why don’t you and Malfoy go to the Whomping Willow, and Ron and I will look at a few places in the Forbidden Forest?”

“Will you be all right, mate?” Harry asked, nodding to Ron’s leg.

“I think so,” Ron said. His voice was thick, but he was making the same effort Hermione was, to ignore Draco and keep going, and Harry smiled at him in thanks. Perhaps Ron caught the smile, because his voice became a bit warmer. “I mean, I’ve only got one of the smartest witches in the country with me, and I was only going to be teaching one of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes here when the school opened.”

Harry nodded, squeezed Ron’s shoulder, and turned to Draco. He’d been sitting suspiciously still, which Harry hoped meant he wasn’t preparing some nasty surprise in the near future. “Are you all right with this division of labor, Draco?” He wouldn’t let Draco overturn all their plans, but he deserved to be consulted in an endeavor he had joined.

Draco looked at him calmly, and let a faint smile play along his mouth. Then, before Harry could stop him, he lifted Harry’s hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles with a sharp sucking sound. Ron gagged. Harry thought he heard Hermione gasp, too, but since he had a hard time looking at anything but Draco’s face and the deep, intense gaze that was sucking him in and down, he didn’t know for sure.

“I will be,” Draco said, and no more.

*

 

Harry darted under the wildly moving branches of the willow and stabbed something high on the trunk. A knot, Draco thought. The branches froze with a shudder, and Harry turned and nodded to Draco.

Draco took a deep breath and moved in slowly. It had been harder than he’d thought it would be to watch Harry go in by himself, although Draco had agreed to it because he didn’t know where the mechanism for stopping the tree was and he didn’t move as fast as Harry. He had wanted to spring on the branches and force them to stop moving, or cast a Stunning Charm, or drag Harry back by main force, anything that would keep him safe.

Draco couldn’t remember fits of protectiveness like that with his other lovers. He wondered if it had something to do with the fact that he and Harry planned to make this relationship permanent, or the peculiar nature of the relationship.

Watching Harry trotting back to him with his green eyes bright and his head cocked, listening to invisible music, Draco decided that it didn’t really matter. The difference was there, and he would live with it and respect it.

He did lean in and kiss Harry when he slowed to a stop, before he could speak. Harry blushed and stammered beautifully, of course, as he always did, and then cleared his throat and turned to the tree as if he thought it would make a better audience for his embarrassment than Draco would.

“I didn’t see any sign that it’s been disturbed recently,” he said. “I’d thought the Ministry might have placed a charm on it to render it safer, but they didn’t.”

Draco narrowed his eyes in thought. “Perhaps they suspected that something important was here.”

Harry rolled his eyes at him. “I don’t think so. True, Professor Snape died in the Shrieking Shack, but I doubt that anyone would be curious enough to go up the tunnel, the way I did, just to learn how they found the body. They could have come in through the door, if they wanted.”

Draco jerked his head up in a tight nod. He had forgotten, somehow, that Severus had died so short a distance from this place.

_That’s the thing that portraits and lovers have in common,_ he thought, irrationally. _They make you forget about the dead._

“I’ll go to the left,” he said. “You to the right. Shout if you run into a danger that’s too hard for you to handle.” He wondered if he should have made the instructions more specific a moment later, because Harry was apt to think that he could handle any danger, but Harry had nodded and turned away. Draco sighed and took his own route.

Harry was right; no one appeared to have been near enough the tree to disturb it. Draco found animal tracks, years of fallen leaves, dirt in abundance, and a few holes among the roots of the tree itself. He conjured a magical eye each time that let him peer into the depths of the burrow, but found only more animal tracks and a few old bones inside.

The tree wasn’t as large as it looked to the eyes of a child. He and Harry met up again in a few minutes. Harry was frowning.

“I keep thinking this has to be the best candidate,” he muttered. “A significant tree. What other one is there on the grounds? Maybe, if Hermione is right and some of those sites in the Forbidden Forest are important, they could be the right candidates. But what are the chances that a tree in the forest is important to both Dumbledore and Snape?”

“Not good,” Draco had to admit. He was wishing now that he had asked the portrait of Severus this morning before they left. True, the portrait couldn’t remember the riddles, but he might be able to tell them if there was any event that they didn’t know about, something known only to Dumbledore and Severus themselves.

Then again, the riddles weren’t meant to be impossible to solve, and this one could be if one didn’t speak to the portraits. Draco frowned more fiercely.

“That line, ‘bright in eternity,’ has to mean something,” Harry said, as if talking to himself. “What?”

“I don’t know,” Draco said. He looked over his shoulder at the tree again. The roots and the trunk kept their secrets well. He tapped his fingers on the wand and thought again. “Perhaps we should investigate the Shrieking Shack. The lines of the riddle might refer to different places. The first two lines to the Whomping Willow, perhaps, and the last two to the Shack.”

Harry turned a frown on him in turn. “And you think that the Shack would fit the line about eternity better than the tree does?”

Draco shook his head. “I know that there were dark memories associated with the Shack for Severus before he died there. He wouldn’t tell me what they were in detail, but he tensed up whenever I mentioned it.”

Harry, uncharacteristically, hesitated. “Oh,” he said a moment later, in a lame fashion. “Did he? That’s strange.”

“You know something,” Draco said. He hardly avoided making it a question, he was so startled. How could Harry have learned something about Severus that Draco didn’t know? Severus would hardly have chosen him as a confessor. 

But from the guilty flush in Harry’s cheeks and the sudden memory of the time that Harry had spent with Dumbledore when he was younger, Draco could imagine how it might have happened. He gestured for Harry to go in front of him.

The tunnel that led into the Shrieking Shack was long enough and low enough and dirty enough that Draco could feel his temper fraying by the time that he finally came up into the building. It was no wonder that so many students had looked for the secret and never found it. How many of them would have thought this entrance was important in the first place, and how many of them could have crawled as long as Draco had?

“This had better be right, Potter,” he growled as he stood up and swatted the dust from the knees of his trousers. “Or you’re paying for my clothes to be cleaned.”

“What, you don’t want me to _lick_ them clean?”

Draco looked up and had to catch his breath. Harry’s eyes were bright with insolence, his head lowered as if he was going to get right in Draco’s face and challenge his authority. It probably wouldn’t help either of them if Draco drowned in his own drool, though, so he turned away with a sneer and began to eye the walls.

Harry chucked behind him. Draco carefully didn’t turn around until he thought his voice was under control. Then he said, “I don’t see anything here that looks like a trap or a fight to the death, do you?”

“No,” Harry said. “But we didn’t see the water-snakes before we stumbled into that trap, either. Let’s quarter the room the way we halved the tree. You take that side first, and I’ll take the other.”

Draco resigned himself to a long period of tapping the walls with his wand and casting every revealing spell he could think of. No matter how long it took, though, he was starting to think that there was nothing here. The place looked as if only the dust and a few rats had lived here since Severus died.

What had it been like, to feel death creeping over him? Draco could imagine it, since he had analyzed Nagini’s poison from a fang he’d “borrowed” from the Aurors, and knew what magical properties it had and what potions it was similar to. But he could never be sure, not when Severus’s portrait didn’t remember his death.

_That’s what all the dead are like for us,_ Draco thought with a faint sigh. _Gone beyond reach and recall._

They met up in the middle of the room the way they had met up near the tree, and Draco shook his head. “No,” Harry said in response, bending down to look under a dusty piece of wood that stood near the wall. Draco thought it was the remains of a bed, left behind now as worthless. There were ashes on the floor near the foot of the wood that might have been part of the bed at one point. Like everything else here, they were worth nothing.

Draco shuddered. _God, this is a depressing place. And I’ll depress myself the longer I stay here._

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, only to hear another voice echoing him. When he looked up, he realized that he was looking into Harry’s eyes, which were wide with what Draco thought was a kind of superstitious dread. Despite everything, he managed to smirk in Harry’s direction.

“Oh, shut up,” Harry muttered, and headed for the tunnel. “Licking dirt off your clothes looks positively fun next to this.”

Those words were enough to keep Draco dreaming all the way back to the castle.

*

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry sighed. He had gone back to his room in Hogsmeade to retrieve his belongings and pay the money he still owed for the lodgings and meals. He hadn’t meant to run into Covington on the way back.

_Maybe this is why Draco was so insistent about me not leaving,_ Harry thought, but realistically, he knew he had to blame his own behavior for that, not Draco’s fear of Covington. He turned around and nodded to her. “Good day, ma’am.”

Covington had caught him on the path that wound from Hogsmeade towards the school. She had a flask in her hand, and waved it at him with a little smile. “They make delicious tea at the Hog’s Head, if you know how to ask for it,” she said. “I got some to take with me.”

Harry made a polite noise. He thought the sloshing brown liquid in the flask, the color of ditch-water, wasn’t a kind of tea he would have chosen, but he was determined to give Covington nothing that she could use to impugn or quarrel with him.

She fell into step beside him as they headed up the path. Harry looked at her enough to fulfill the rules of courtesy, but was glad that the walls of Hogwarts came nearer and nearer every minute and he would soon be back inside them.

“I wish you would learn to work with the Ministry, Mr. Potter.”

Harry hoped that his smile didn’t look too fake. “Well, I’ve never been good at working under authority. If you’ve spoken with Professor McGonagall or any of the others who remember me, you must have heard that I was in trouble constantly when I was a student.”

Covington put a hand on his sleeve. Harry halted because he had to, but he could feel the anger stirring beneath the surface of his skin, in a way it hadn’t since he had agreed to try and make a go of this with Draco. He would never be comfortable with strangers touching him.

“We are not children now, Mr. Potter.” Covington could do an impression amount of wide-eyed, solemn speaking when she had to, Harry thought. “I had hoped we could move past this and into a cooperative bond based on what we both have to offer.”

Harry resisted the temptation to either send flame ringing up her fingers or take her words overly personally. “You mean the Ministry and me?” he asked. “No, I don’t think of the members of the Ministry as children.” _Just childish._ “I’m not sure what growing up has to do with anything when you’re talking about an organization.”

“You want to see a stable wizarding world, and you want to see Hogwarts open again,” Covington said, peering into his eyes as if she would see a demon hiding behind them that might account for his strange actions. “That is all the Ministry wants, as well. We are unsure why you are resisting so much.”

“I distrust the Ministry’s methods, if not its goals.” Harry glanced at Hogwarts. He would have given a lot to see Draco, or even Ron and Hermione, strolling along the paths right now.

Then he shook his head. What was he thinking? He could certainly handle Covington, and the guilt that her soft, insinuating words were trying to inspire in him. He was a more powerful wizard than the Ministry had ever known, since Harry hadn’t showed them his magic on the days when he knew he couldn’t control it.

Covington’s hand tightened on his arm, and she breathed a single word that Harry didn’t recognize, a word in Latin. His muscles froze.

Harry’s magic boiled up at once, coming from beneath his heart and liver. He knew that he would shatter the spell she had cast in a few moments and then he would make her sorry, sorry that she lived and breathed—

His magic met the barrier of the spell, and stuck there. Incredulous, Harry tried to will his magic to open his throat, to let his eyes blink, or even to curl one of his fingers. Nothing happened.

Covington stepped around in front of him. She had a faint whiteness to her face that made Harry think she hadn’t been sure that spell would work until she actually used it, but she _had_ used it, and he was going to destroy her. He glared at her so that she would know that.

Covington didn’t seem inclined to pay attention. Instead, she held up the flask of brown liquid and turned it back and forth, as if she wanted to see how much sunlight could get through the muddy amber. Harry felt his heart begin to pick up speed in a way that was unfamiliar from the last few years. He had felt much anger, but not much fear.

“Not enough,” Covington said with what sounded like regret. “Not enough to keep you under control for days, at least. And I _do_ wish that I had managed to freeze you when your mouth was open. This is going to be difficult.” She looked at his face and offered the kind of apologetic shrug Harry thought she might give one of her superiors at the Ministry. “Oh, well. I’ve done harder things.”

She reached up and clamped her hand on his jaw, prying it down. Harry felt the barrier of the spell that stuck against the surface of his skin shiver, broken by the movement of one part of his body. He tensed, ready to attack, if only with a bite, the moment she let his jaw go.

She didn’t give him a chance. His lips opened reluctantly, and she laid the mouth of the flask against it, pouring in the liquid. Harry choked, and went on choking as the drink poured in. He could feel it trickling down between his teeth and along the sides of his face.

Covington sighed. “It’s only too clear that no one tried this in the field,” she muttered, and then cast another spell with a wave of her wand. The muscles in Harry’s throat relaxed, and she reached up and started to massage them, trying to force him to swallow.

Harry didn’t hesitate. He wouldn’t get a better chance. Once again, she had disrupted the integrity of the immobilizing spell, weakening it, and her skin was against his skin now, rather than the harmless glass of the flask. He would wound her. He had wounded people with less magic and less anger.

The magic flung itself against the sides of his throat, against the charm that continued to hold him prisoner. It was difficult, especially because his unblinking eyes were beginning to dry out and ache, and he had to worry about what the potion that had already flowed down his throat would do to him. But the desperation was a goad to the fury, and on he worked, reaching up again and again and scraping the anger against her spell like a chisel against rock.

It gave way. Suddenly Harry could feel her fingers against his skin, instead of a distant sensation as if she touched him through gloves, and that meant the magic could feel her.

Covington shrieked as spikes grew through the sides of Harry’s neck and curled around her fingers, holding them trapped there. She yanked, and Harry worried for a moment about the spikes simply tearing his flesh aside to keep her prisoner. 

But the magic protected him against any pain, or else the anger did. The magic passed through Harry like lightning, up and then down, and broke the glassy spell that gripped his limbs. He flexed his arms, reached up, grabbed the flask, and flung it away from him, while at the same time spitting out all the liquid that was still in his mouth.

The flask shattered on the ground. Harry grimaced and Summoned one shard of glass coated with the potion, the magic extending from his fingers into another, giant hand and scooping up the shard. He should probably keep that so Draco could analyze the potion and tell him what it had been meant to do.

Covington was still screaming. Harry stepped back, but the spikes pulled her with him, and she was screaming practically into his face, her own face splotched with red and white.

Harry panted. He wanted to destroy her. The magic that could do it raged up and down in him, as capable of being aimed as a Muggle gun. He could do it, and no one would find a trace of her. The Ministry could investigate, but they would never learn what happened. Harry was capable of concealing every hint.

They might suspect him. They wouldn’t know.

Harry swallowed and closed his eyes. He envisioned Draco’s face, and then the way Draco had lain on top of him when they were in bed together last night. He remembered the tight feeling of the chains around his limbs when they were in the Room of Requirement together. The Ministry might not be able to find the evidence, but he thought they would condemn him for the murder anyway when Covington disappeared, and that would—it would devastate Draco. Or at least Harry thought so. It was still strange to work through these ideas and think that someone other than him would care if he was condemned to Azkaban.

He concentrated. The spikes snapped back into his throat. Harry glared at Covington. He didn’t know if he had swallowed any of the potion, but if he had, it wasn’t enough to make him into her slave, or whatever else it had been meant to do. Covington lay on the ground and whimpered softly with big eyes, staring up at him.

“Remember that I spared your life,” Harry said. His voice was rough. He shook his head and turned away when the temptation to make her stop whimpering came to him.

He carried the shard, and he carried the memory, which he would place in a Pensieve as soon as he could. He had never actually committed murder, despite the temptations that had sometimes presented themselves when his magic was high. He would keep from it now, when he was on the verge of a better life. He wasn’t going to allow Covington to ruin that for him.

*

Draco glanced at the clock and frowned. He thought it shouldn’t have taken Harry as long as this to fetch his belongings from Hogsmeade, but perhaps he had stopped to talk to Granger or Weasel. Perhaps he had decided to have lunch instead of eating with Draco.

“Perhaps he is not coming back,” Severus murmured from the portrait frame, with exquisitely painful timing.

“Shut up,” Draco snapped at him, and then bent again over the cauldron that contained the sentient potion. It had retreated to the bottom and decided to sulk today. Draco was trying to figure out how he would coax it into performing when it had grown smart enough to suspect that doing so would be the prelude to pain.

“What reason does he have to stay with you?” Small splashes and plops came from Severus’s painting. He had been brewing something new all day, although Draco didn’t know what it was. “Tell me that. You have been very accommodating for him, very convenient. He got the ability to settle his anger and a good fuck from you. But when he left your immediate presence, he would begin to think again. He would begin to think that he has his friends back, and that they stand a good chance of helping him solve the riddle even if you don’t. Why would he return?”

“Be quiet, Severus,” Draco said.

The words still hung in the air when someone knocked at the door. Draco shot Severus a triumphant look as he went to open it, and was delighted to see that Severus was ruffled enough to betray a frown. He quickly looked the other way, of course, and dropped something new into the cauldron. The potion hissed in a discouraging way.

When Draco opened the door, Harry staggered in, carrying something covered with a foul-looking potion and blood in his hand. He nodded to Draco and leaned against the wall for a minute. “I got hurt more than I thought I did,” he gasped.

Draco stared at him for a moment, so shocked that it was difficult to move. Harry blinked at him and pushed a hank of hair hanging in his eyes aside. His expression was inquiring, but it suddenly closed and he moved to the side, looking away. “Well,” he said, voice distant, “it doesn’t matter. I’ll put this over here and tell you what happened, and you can analyze the potion when you have time for it. I see that you’re working right now.”

The words were enough to loosen Draco’s paralysis. He knew when someone was drawing away from him, when he was losing contact that he desired, and he would _not_ allow Harry to go right back into the holding pattern from which Draco had labored so hard to rescue him. He grabbed Harry’s shoulders and propelled him backwards into the wall. Harry winced, but not with the exaggerated movements Draco knew would mark back injuries. He lifted his head, too, a moment later, and glared at Draco.

“Malfoy, what the hell—” 

Draco fastened his mouth into place, kissing and biting. Perhaps he could have spoken reassuring words instead, but he wanted to apologize for the moment of shock and tell Harry that he was still welcome here without words.

Harry stiffened, then melted against him with a small whimper that he was flushed red about when Draco pulled away to look at him. His hand had wandered into Draco’s hair and locked on, and his eyes were closed, his head tilted back. Draco nodded and kissed his forehead in turn, then lifted the bleeding hand.

“It looks like that you cut your hand on the glass,” he said. He was amazed to hear his voice come out critical and calm, balanced, rather than the scolding tone he had thought he would adopt. “Why did that happen? Why couldn’t you use your magic to pick it up?”

“I did at first,” Harry said. He was still leaning against the wall, hand in Draco’s hair, though it was starting to lose its grip and wander down to his shoulder. “But I had to pick it up when the magic faded. That must have happened somewhere along the path to your rooms. I really don’t remember it,” he added, in what sounded like a voice of astonishment. “I wonder why?”

Draco shook his head. He didn’t know enough about Harry’s relationship with his magic to say what was and wasn’t normal. He wouldn’t think about that for right now, and concentrate on keeping Harry’s trust and learning the truth instead. “What happened?” he asked, levitating the shard from Harry’s fingers with a flick of his wand. The shard landed on the table and sat there, sopping. Draco wrinkled his nose. The potion’s original smell was no treat, but it smelled worse when mixed with the blood that Harry had left on the glass.

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “I mean, Covington stopped me, and then she used some sort of spell, sent through her hand on my arm, to freeze me in place. She had to unfreeze my jaw and throat muscles to get the potion down me, though. That was when I shot spikes through my neck and ripped her hand up.”

Draco at once crossed the room and pushed Harry back against the wall just as he was starting to step away. Harry went, wrinkling his forehead at Draco as if to ask what the problem was.

“Where did the spikes come out?” Draco demanded, staring at Harry’s throat. It looked uninjured to him, but he had to admit that he didn’t know much about this kind of thing, and didn’t know if magical defenses like that would necessarily leave any remnant behind.

“Out of my neck, in the front,” Harry said. “I’m afraid that I can’t name the muscles. I rather had other things on my mind at the time,” he added, and now there was a sneer in the back of his voice that spoke of his rising anger.

Draco wrapped his hand around the base of Harry’s throat and hung on. Harry’s eyes widened, then closed again. Draco smiled. The restraint appealed to Harry, and exercising it took away some of Draco’s murderous fury that urged him to dash outside, find Covington, and then kill her.

“You did right, hurting her,” he whispered. “But you didn’t kill her, and that’s good.” He was sure Harry would have confessed at once if they had a death to cover up. “What did the potion taste like?”

“Frogs’ legs and other unmentionables, what I could taste of it through the binding spell that she cast on me,” Harry said, making a face. He didn’t turn away from the clutch that Draco had on his throat, though, and Draco made no attempt to release him. “She pretended it was tea she had bought in Hogsmeade at first.”

“She needed to get close to you to use it,” Draco said quietly, and turned his head so that he could look at the glass on the table. He wanted to go and analyze the mixture that he could see shimmering sickly all over it, but it would have meant releasing Harry. He wasn’t sure if that was the best idea. “That limits the number of potions it could have been.”

“What?” Harry asked. His voice was slurring a bit. Shock, Draco thought, eyeing him. He had probably got through the moments of immediate danger all right, but now he was beginning to shake with reaction. “Of course she would have to get close to me to use it. It’s a potion. She didn’t have any choice, if she wanted me to swallow it.”

Draco tapped the back of Harry’s skull with one finger, making his eyes flutter open again when they’d been on the verge of closing. “Keep up,” he said mildly. “There are some potions that you can use from a distance. If it could be absorbed through your skin or smelled, then she wouldn’t have had to freeze you like that. Inviting you to smell the ‘delicious tea’ she had would have been enough. And she also made an effort to catch you alone. That suggests the changes the potion brings about would have happened immediately, or at least quickly, and in a way that would have been unmistakably different from your normal behavior to anyone who knew you.”

“Do you know me?” Harry gave him a crooked smile as his eyes fluttered shut again. “I didn’t notice.”

“Lie down,” Draco murmured into his ear. “I’m going to work on analyzing this potion, and I would rather that you were spending your time in a place where I know you were. If some of the potion did go down your throat—”

“It couldn’t have been a lot,” Harry argued, struggling to keep his eyes open. “I would have felt it, I think.”

“We don’t always know what’s our own behavior and what’s not, when we’re under the influence of a new potion,” Draco said, with perfect sympathy. He had experimented with some of his own concoctions, to make sure that they were sufficiently undetectable, and he still remembered the strange impulses that had dashed through him, as though he was host to another person’s spirit. “For now, I want you to lie down and see if you can sleep this off.”

Harry grunted. Draco thought for a minute they would get into another row, but Harry sighed, murmured, “Yes, Draco,” and staggered through the door into the bedroom. Draco peered after him just to make sure that he really was collapsing on the bed instead of the floor, and then returned to the shard of glass.

“Bring that here.”

Draco started. He had forgotten that they had a witness. But this was potentially something that Severus would help with, rather than simply mock from a distance, and so Draco scooped up the shard and took it over to the portrait. He had already cast a spell that would keep his skin from being pierced. He would no more feed an unknown potion into his veins than he would send Harry back out to face Covington right now.

_Covington._

An anger that was alien in its intensity moved through Draco when he thought of her attacking Harry. He would destroy her for that. He would destroy her for a great deal, in truth, but that would come first.

Harry was _his_.

And that meant no one got to take him away, either in the way that Draco suspected this potion was meant to do or in others. He could feel his lips sliding back from his teeth as he thought about it, and had to shake his head sharply to bring his mind back to a focus on what Severus was saying about the potion.

The portrait looked at him from the corner of one eye as he spoke, perhaps wondering whether Draco would storm out of the room and try to confront Covington immediately. “That brown color says that it shares some ingredients with the Willow Spine potion.”

Draco nodded, not seeing the need to look less ferocious. The Willow Spine potion would weaken the victim’s willpower, leading him to do more or less as the creator of the potion commanded. With great effort, a command could be resisted, but then it took longer for the will to recover, and in the meantime, the Potions master involved could wring more actions out of his defeated slave. 

It was an especially insidious weapon to use against someone like Harry, since Draco suspected he would fight back at once instead of waiting for a more advantageous time and place the way that some people would, and that meant Covington could wait out the initial struggle and dangle him from her fingers like a puppet thereafter.

“Is it a variation?” he asked. “I can’t believe Covington would carry pure Willow Spine about with her, not when the consequences for being caught with it are too great for even the Ministry to tolerate.”

“Smell it,” Severus said. “Carefully,” he added, as if he suspected Draco would try to plunge his nose into the middle of the potion. “The Willow Spine works by ingestion, but this could be an olfactory cousin.”

“Yes, thank you for that elementary precaution,” Draco murmured. He let his nostrils open delicately to their widest extent. He could smell something crushed and green at the base of the potion, with salt and murk piled on top of that. That wasn’t the usual scent of the Willow Spine, and he frowned. “It really does smell like the ditchwater that it resembles,” he admitted.

Severus laughed. Draco looked up at him with an eyebrow raised, wondering if Covington had paid a great deal of money for a potion that wouldn’t work. Draco would punish her severely no matter what, of course, but it might lessen the charges that he could bring against her, if he chose that route.

Severus, though, wore the delighted expression he usually got when contemplating a master’s work, not the scorn that he showed those fools trapped by their own stupidity. “It was experimental when I was alive,” he said. “The Danish had begun to modify the Willow Spine so that it would have a more subtle but lasting influence. The one who used the potion would still be in control, but wouldn’t be able to count on instant obedience. On the other hand, that has its advantages, since it means that the orders could take place over longer periods of time, and the one fed the potion could be trusted out of sight. My guess is that Covington intended to feed Potter that potion and then _Obliviate_ him so that he would obey her without realizing what had happened.”

Draco nodded. One reason the Willow Spine potion wasn’t more used was the sort of bond it created between the victim and his master, which ensured that he would remember what had happened—and be able to testify against his master, if he escaped—even if a Memory Charm was used. “And undetectable, of course?”

“But of course,” Severus murmured. Then a shadow of uncertainty passed over his face. “At least, the Danish version was supposed to be. They never perfected it, that I had heard. I strongly suspect that we would not be able to tell if this version was supposed to be unless we tested it.”

“Which I am not in a hurry to do,” Draco said acidly, thinking of the way that Harry had looked when he came back into their rooms.

Severus inclined his head in agreement. “But perhaps you should do something about Covington, given that she has, at the moment, nothing but a torn hand and a chance to have cleaned up the flask the potion came in.”

Draco cursed and spun to face the door. In his overwhelming concern for Harry, it hadn’t even occurred to him that Covington would be spinning her own story as hard as she could in the time left to her.

“You are in love,” Severus said in a tolerant voice. “And love makes us fools of us all.”

“Between the two of us,” Draco snapped back, as he reached out and plucked one of the vials from the central table in the room, “we have more power than Covington can command or comprehend, which was precisely why she wanted to ride on our backs.”

Severus’s reply was cut off by the slam of the door. Draco took a moment, standing in the dungeon corridor, to master his breathing and his heartrate. He had no intention of letting Covington escape, but on the other hand, he couldn’t charge around like a madman looking for her. 

He pressed forwards.

*

Harry woke up when he heard the door to Snape’s rooms shut. He listened with a frown, and decided that Draco must be out of the rooms when he didn’t hear him moving around.

_That’s probably a bad thing,_ Harry thought, flinging the blankets back and sitting up. He knew Draco had been killingly angry when he sent Harry to bed. Harry hadn’t been worried because he thought Draco could keep his temper under control with that same icy lightness he had shown Harry when they were fucking.

“Draco?” he called, stepping into the central room.

“Do let him do as he wishes,” a drawl said from behind him. “He has taken a potion and will act better without you there at his side. Trying to hold him back will simply make him impatient of restraint, and your presence will inflame him to demonstrate that he _can_ protect you. Let him go, and he will extract a powerful but not overwhelming revenge.”

Harry turned to Snape’s portrait. He wondered if it would lie, and then decided it probably wouldn’t. If Draco was really in danger, the portrait probably would have already flickered away, in fact, to watch out of another frame.

“You’re sure?” he asked dubiously.

Snape leaned on his cauldron and sneered at Harry. The cauldron wasn’t bubbling, which Harry thought was a first since he had come back to Hogwarts.

“Not _entirely_ sure, Potter, as no one can predict the future,” Snape said. “And do _not_ bring Trelawney up to me.” From his shudder, Harry thought Dumbledore’s portrait must often have done that. “But it is my belief that Draco needs to do this himself, to confirm, if only in his own mind, the—unusual—relation to you he has taken up.”

Harry turned away, flushing and pulling on his hair. He had forgotten that Snape, along with all the other portraits, knew about his sex with Draco in the Room of Requirement.

“How unusual,” Snape said to his back, with the light, almost bored tone that meant he was preparing some masterpiece of malice. “How _wonderful¸_ that a Potter would prefer to be dominated rather than dominating others.”

Harry shook his head quickly. “It’s not that,” he said. “I know what you’re talking about, and I’m different from those people.”

“But not so marvelous that a Potter would claim uniqueness,” Snape said, from the sound of it telling the walls.

“I’m not—” Harry fell silent and moved to the other side of the room. Draco had laid the glass shard in the middle of the table. Harry stared down at it and wished he had written notes about what the potion was. At least that would convince Harry that Draco was justified in getting as angry about what Covington had done as he’d sounded. 

_Why should I argue with Snape? He would only find some way to twist my words around anyway, and I’d rather save my efforts for someone who actually deserves them._

“You are unusual,” Snape said flatly to his back. “Do not accept that, and it would make Draco miserable. I would rather not see him miserable.”

Harry turned back and glared at Snape, good resolutions already forgotten. Draco might have to live with a portrait frame cracked down the middle or a canvas that had caught fire. “D’you think I _want_ to make him miserable? But I won’t be the slave or the pet that you’re thinking of, either.”

“How do you know that is what I am thinking of?” Snape moved so that he was standing beside the bookshelf, but made no pretense of reaching for a book. He studied Harry without blinking, in fact. Harry concealed a shudder over that fact and decided there were some advantages to being paint.

“Because you mentioned domination first,” Harry said, and had to keep his fingers from curling around the shard. He might destroy important evidence that Draco needed to analyze later. Or he might cut his fingers. It was strange to think that Draco might be more upset about that than about the destruction of evidence. “And then that you don’t want him to be unhappy. Apparently he needs a slave to be happy.” His voice curdled in his throat. He didn’t believe that, but then again, Snape had known Draco longer.

“You have become sensitive to the nuances of words at last,” Snape said. “Is it any surprise that you still interpret them wrongly?”

Harry refused to look up, and tapped his fingers on the table to ease his impatience and anger. Draco couldn’t be far ahead. If Harry left now and went with him, he would at least know what he planned to do. And, really, _wasn’t_ his place at Draco’s side? Their sexual relationship didn’t mean that Harry had to keep away from him because Draco had chosen to “defend his honor.”

He had started to reach out for the door-handle when Snape spoke again, in the neutral tone Harry had once heard him use to tell Hermione that her potion was correct. “Draco needs a focus for his intensity. He has found a suitable one in you. I would prefer that you not destroy yourself when that would deprive him of his focus.”

Harry blinked. Snape looked as if he was trying to keep from chewing on his tongue, but he had actually spoken the words, and they seemed to be true. That they weren’t about Harry’s welfare but Draco’s wasn’t the point. Of course they would be about Draco’s welfare, because Draco was the one Snape cared about.

The one Harry cared about, too, come to that.

“Isn’t his brewing focus enough?” Harry asked. “He’s told me about some of the things he’s doing with experimental potions—”

“No doubt, in truth, things he did two or three years ago,” Snape interrupted. He had an air of relief, as though he was launching vitriol to relieve an itch that had built up when he admitted Harry might be good for something. “It would take him that long to simplify the concepts so that you could understand them.”

Harry ignored this, and had the satisfaction of seeing Snape look exquisitely frustrated. “Well, isn’t it focus enough? Why would he need someone like me, if he has such an all-consuming passion?”

Snape sighed hard enough to make the portrait frame swing on the wall, or at least it looked like it. “Because potions are not people,” he said. “And because they cannot give him someone to fuck.” He paused and tilted his head. “Unless he has delved into areas of research that I cannot see him having an interest in,” he murmured, attention caught. “Perhaps I should encourage his interest, however.”

“If they would be dangerous to him, then you can’t,” Harry said.

Snape gave him a faint, distantly amused look. “How do you imagine that you could stop me?”

 

Harry held up a hand without answering. The anger was slow to come, but not the magic, and if he couldn’t call up flames as devouring as the normal ones that resulted from his rage, he doubted Snape knew that. He held out his hand towards the portrait and watched as Snape stilled, his eyes fixed on the fire.

“You have made your point,” Snape said at last, though he apparently had to swallow bile twice before he could speak.

Harry lowered his hand. “I meant it,” he said, not dismissing the fire yet, because he wanted Snape to take him seriously. “I don’t want you to encourage anything that would be dangerous to him. I want—I want him safe. I want him happy. If I can achieve that only by walking away from him, then I will, but you haven’t proved that I can do that yet. In fact, you’re speaking as though I’m necessary to him.”

It was his turn to have words catch in his throat. He didn’t know what he felt at the moment, tossed back and forth between emotions and conclusions, reactions and facts. He wanted to stay with Draco. He didn’t want Draco in trouble. He still had trouble accepting the truth about himself. That truth seemed to be something Draco desired, or that made him desire Harry, so Harry wanted it to stay the same. He shook his head sharply and closed his fingers down, eliminating the fires.

“Trust that Draco will restrain himself,” Snape said then. He was no longer chewing on ashes, and when Harry looked up, he had come forwards to lean on the edge of the portrait frame. “He has played these games for far longer than you have. The Ministry woman might feel that she must fight for her life with you there, given that you wounded her. She will be less cautious around Draco, and he will get further with her.”

“To the point of killing her?” Harry murmured, but he no longer felt as much need to open the door and storm after Draco.

Snape shook his head. “He would not do such a thing when he understands the cost—and the cost will remain in his mind even when he is most angry.”

“More than I can do,” Harry had to admit.

Snape sneered, but seemed to consider the straight line too perfect to take advantage of. “In the end, you will be avenged, and Draco’s need to protect you be assuaged, and the Ministry woman under control.” He paused thoughtfully. “In truth, this may be the best thing that could have happened.” He ignored Harry’s snort. “I do not mean your enslavement. I mean the Ministry acting in such a way that Draco does not need to hide behind the polite walls of politics. Until this moment, all their offenses against you were too far in the past to merit revenge. Now, he can do something that should result in the Ministry reopening Hogwarts as you desire, or at least making a bargain with you.”

“He’s going to take Covington as a hostage, and then bargain with them?” Harry hazarded.

Snape laughed. Harry jumped. He hadn’t imagined that he would ever hear a full and free laugh like that from Snape’s throat, without a hint—well, all right, this had a _hint_ —of the malice that Snape seemed to feel all the time.

“Watch and learn from a master,” Snape said, turning back to his cauldron. “I can see part of the reason why Draco likes having you. You will be a pleasure to educate.”

Harry made some weak protest, but he knew it was weak as he made it, and that Snape had talked him into waiting. Not because he was afraid, he knew; he could have handled Covington. But because he trusted Draco, and because he wanted to _show_ that he trusted Draco.

He went back into the bedroom, to lessen the temptation to talk to Snape again and ruin the fragile accord that subsisted between them right now or touch the vials and destroy something, and found himself looking at the gloves that Draco had enchanted to bind his hands the other night. Harry flushed and turned his head away, but then looked back, his breath quickening. 

It would do no harm if he—

Right.

He picked up the gloves and held them for a time, turning them over, then slid them onto his hands. The enchantment Draco had placed on them didn’t activate without his presence, but Harry could still feel the tight clutch of the leather, and had to close his eyes as a thrill passed through his blood.

This might—

This might be all right.

*

In the end, Draco found Covington by the simplest means. He only had to summon a house-elf and ask it where she was, promising that he had a healing potion to relieve the pain in her hand. The elf squeaked and scraped and bowed, and told him that she was in an office on the sixth floor that apparently served as her private infirmary.

Draco reached it and spent some time considering his potion, wondering if he should hide it or pretend that his lie to the elf was the truth. In the end, he shook his head and pushed the door open. He was too angry to practice effective subterfuge, and Covington would never trust a potion that he offered her now.

Covington was holding a mangled mess of a hand over a cauldron, wringing the skin around her fingers back and forth with her good hand, apparently trying to bleed it out so that she could use the blood to create a healing enchantment. Draco admired her steadiness of mind. He didn’t know many wizards who would automatically try to do something so time-consuming and magic-consuming when they were wounded.

He shut the door behind him hard enough that she would hear it. Covington started and turned towards him, half-crouched as if she intended to cast a spell—though since her wand was on the floor beside the cauldron, Draco wondered how she would have done that.

“Goodness, Mr. Malfoy,” she said, with a wide, false smile. “You startled me.”

It was the first time Draco could remember that she had neglected to call him Potions master Malfoy. He didn’t think it was deliberate, so much as the pain catching up with her and making her forget about details. He stared to walk forwards, one hand on the vial that he carried in his pocket.

“What’s the matter?” Covington straightened up and stared at him with a displeased expression, the kind that she might use on a house-elf who had interrupted her lunch. Her mangled hand remained above the cauldron. Draco had to admire her focus, too. She never lost sight of what was really important—in this case, healing herself.

“The problem,” Draco said, deciding that he could explain to her, since she wouldn’t have long to resist, “is that you tried to enslave my partner.” It was a simpler word than many that came to mind, and perhaps not quite true. But then again, he could say that Harry was his partner for the duration of the investigation into the riddles. He stopped in front of her and looked at the hand.

“He told you how this happened?” Covington’s voice held nothing but curiosity. Draco wondered if she didn’t know as much about the connection between him and Harry as she thought she did. 

“Yes,” Draco said. “And you shouldn’t have done it.” He met her eyes, wanting to see the dread gathering there.

Covington pursed her lips as if she didn’t know what to make of that. “I certainly shouldn’t have done it,” she agreed, and gestured with her head to the dripping blood. “I learned a lesson about trying to use a potion on someone I am unprepared to fight. I remain uncertain—and curious—why it is your concern, however.”

Draco shook his head. He would have to speak some more of the truth to make her dread, he saw, and then he would have to move fast, since he couldn’t chance her getting away and using what she knew. “It is my concern because I have control of my partner for my own purposes. He trusts his health and safety to me, in some ways. And you have violated that. You tried to take control of him.”

Covington’s eyes, for a moment, reflected nothing but astonishment. Draco nodded. Yes, her knowledge had not extended as far as Harry had assumed it had. She knew something about Harry, but not how close they had become.

Then he saw the fear he had been longing for. Draco smiled and held up the vial. “If you swallow this,” he said, “then I don’t need to cause you more pain than Harry already has.”

“You’re mad,” Covington said. She took a step back and faced him squarely, but Draco wasn’t blind to the fact that the step had carried her closer to where her wand lay on the floor. “You _must_ be. Did you really think that you would get away with threatening me?”

“A threat that comes true cannot be classified as a threat any longer,” Draco said. “And you have spent your time threatening both me and Harry since you came here.”

Covington shook her head. “This would mean open warfare with the Ministry,” she said. “And you’re not that stupid. They won’t stand for someone imprisoning, torturing, or poisoning their employees.” Again she moved a step backwards.

“I prefer the term _coercing_ ,” Draco said. “And it doesn’t matter what they call it, if they never find out about it.”

He sprang forwards while Covington was still trying to process his words and locked his arm into place around her throat. Covington raised her bloody hand to fend him off, and Draco closed his teeth on a hanging strip of skin and whipped his head sideways. She screamed in pain, taken off-guard by the jolt that went through her.

And, more to the point, opening her mouth as wide as it was capable of going. Draco had the cork out of the vial already, a deft sleight-of-hand trick that he had perfected to impress his clients. The potion passed into her throat, and Draco slammed his hand across her lips after it, to prevent her from spitting it back out.

From the furious look in her eyes, she was holding it in her mouth instead of swallowing, and she promptly began turning her head from side to side, seeking a way past the barrier of his palm. Draco had one free hand, though, and that hand nestled his wand against the bottom of her chin. He tapped it. “ _Glutio_ ,” he said.

The simple spell, meant to help patients with sore throats swallow their medicinal potions, did its work. Covington’s muscles contracted, and the potion was gone. Draco took his hand away and stepped smoothly back. The noise of the struggle might bring someone, and he wanted to show that he hadn’t hurt her if they did show up.

Covington shivered and bowed her head as if huddling before a strong wind. Draco watched critically, nodding when he noted a slight green undertinge to her skin. That was a sign of the potion working, and he hadn’t wanted to test it until he saw the signs begin to appear.

“Lift your left arm,” he said.

Covington’s left arm shot above her head. She stared at him in horror and dawning revulsion, and Draco smiled sweetly back. He hadn’t perfected the sentient potion that would let him command the bodies of hundreds yet, but this was the next-best thing. It would operate when the person who had swallowed it was away from him, too, and it was undetectable to anyone who might run the standard tests—which definitely included the Potions staff of the Ministry, not known for innovation.

“You won’t speak to anyone of this,” he said. “Your throat closes if you try. You will hurl yourself down the nearest flight of stairs if you try to write something. You needn’t stare at me as if I won’t do it,” he added scornfully, because Covington’s eyes were fixed on him in something that might have been shock and was certainly horror. “I will. I have no compunctions about hurting someone who hurt Harry.”

Covington shook her head. Draco wondered if he should allow her to speak, but he couldn’t see what it would gain to keep her silent at this point. When someone else was watching, yes. “You may speak,” he said. 

“You—must have a desire that I can give you,” Covington said. Although she had to feel the alien thrum of the potion traveling through her by now, she still managed to smile. “We understand each other, I hope? We have both been Slytherins. You must have desires that your Potter can’t grant you.”

Draco studied her, not sure whether he was more surprised or impressed that she was still trying tricks at this late time. “You have nothing I want,” he said. “You might have granted me something when Harry was still uninjured, but you didn’t think of it then, and you’ll give me anything I want now.”

“The Ministry will not trust me if I start advocating for you,” Covington said. Her voice remained clear and quiet. Only her wildly darting eyes let Draco see how much she was affected at the moment. “You still won’t get what you want. On the other hand, release me from this slavery, and I might be…grateful.”

Draco laughed outright then. “You won’t be,” he said. “I know your kind. You’ll smile and thank me prettily while you’re in front of me, and then try to stab me the moment my back is turned. You’ll be too enraged by what I did to you to agree to a reasonable bargain. Come, come, don’t look like that,” he added, cruelly enjoying himself, when Covington stared at him in dismay only until her face smoothed itself out under his instructions. “I’m someone like that myself. That’s how I understand you so well.”

Covington looked as if she would have liked to cry out, but Draco clenched her throat down briskly on _that_ , and stood there studying her for some time. Then he began to give her her commands, one by one, all of them so clearly worded that there was no way she could get around them—unless she wanted to commit suicide. Draco had to admit that he wasn’t able to guard against all the contingencies of that.

“You will not speak a word of this to anyone without your throat closing. You will not hint about it to anyone, or your throat will close. You will walk at once to the nearest staircase and fall down it with no attempt to save yourself if you write anything. You cannot gesture the truth without losing feeling in your hands. You will resist mightily if someone attempts to interrogate you with Legilimency. If someone asks you why you are so agreeable and accommodating now, you will answer that House loyalty to Slytherin compels you.”

“I could lose my position with the Ministry,” Covington whispered. “What use would I be to you then?”

“Absolutely none,” Draco said, and gave her a smile that made her flinch. “Unless as someone to punish. So you should make sure that you don’t lose that position. It’s the only thing sparing your life at the moment.”

Covington closed her eyes. The sweat stood out on her forehead, thick as blood.

Draco tapped his fingers thoughtfully against his lips, and then said, “You’ll remember that I’m in your veins now, I trust? Are there any other chains that I need to set on you?” He would be reluctant to give her extra commands. He wanted her working for their interests with some faint hope that she could free herself, not bound in utter desperation. She might decide to betray them, or try it, because one way or the other she would be free from the slavery, and Harry and Draco might have to work with someone who would be even harder to deal with.

Whimpering, Covington shut her eyes more tightly and shook her head.

“Good,” Draco said, and paused again, until she opened her eyes and looked at him. Draco clucked his tongue. “I take no pleasure in doing this. I wouldn’t have done it at all if you hadn’t threatened Harry. Keep that in mind, if you want to take revenge. I have potions that can do worse things than this.”

Covington’s face said she didn’t believe him, because she couldn’t imagine what would be worse than this. Draco laughed. “I’m a Potions master,” he said. “Think about that, and think about all the ways that nightmares can come true.”

She turned her head away from him, shuddering. Draco nodded. “Remember,” he said. “There need be no long-lasting consequences from this if you can control yourself. When Hogwarts is open again, and Slytherin House restored to its proper place, then I’ll retract most of my restraints, and you can go back to your normal life.”

“The potion will leave my blood?” Covington whispered.

“Oh, that?” Draco asked casually, as if he hadn’t anticipated the question. “Oh, no. It will stay.”

Covington stared at him in sick horror. Draco knew what she was thinking: that she would have to live with the fear for the rest of her life that he’d be bored someday and decide to take control again. 

Draco let his masks drop for a moment, and all his hatred and contempt burn in his eyes. This was what he _did_ to people who preyed on those he loved.

Covington hid from that fury. Draco nodded, murmured, “So glad we understand each other,” and left.

His fury cooled to a slow burn as he did so, and it occurred to him that he and Harry should be able to work on the riddle with few distractions now.

*

“Nothing makes _sense._ ”

Harry winced in sympathy and touched Draco’s back cautiously. Draco had acted simultaneously self-satisfied and easily ruffled since he came back from punishing Covington, and the only thing he had told Harry for certain was that she wouldn’t bother them again. Harry hadn’t even offered congratulations, because Draco pinned him with a piercing stare each time he opened his mouth. Perhaps it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. Perhaps he was feeling a bit ashamed of himself, if he had used the violent or coercive means that Harry suspected him of using.

But he leaned back into Harry’s palm and sighed out what seemed to be most of his tension, so at least _that_ part had to be all right.

“Why doesn’t it make sense?” Harry asked, when a few minutes had passed with him touching Draco and Draco staring at the list of suggestions in front of him with his eyes half-lidded.

“The riddle seems to be talking about a place that rises,” Draco murmured. “That ought to make it a place easily visible on Hogwarts’s grounds. But it can’t be a place inside the school, or someone would have stumbled over it by now. Yet all the candidates on the grounds are objectionable for a number of reasons.” He turned abruptly to Harry. “Have you thought of anything else that could have mattered to Dumbledore?”

“No,” Harry said. “I didn’t know _his_ past all that well. I learned more about Tom Riddle—Voldemort—during my sixth year, when I was studying with him, than I did about him.” He hesitated, then added, “I learned more about him after his death. But I can’t think of anything that would be relevant here.”

“Really?” Draco’s eyes were more piercing than they had been when Harry tried to speak to him earlier.

Harry nodded firmly. “Most of the things I learned about took place far away from Hogwarts, anyway. I don’t see how they could contribute to riddles or memories on the grounds.”

“Hmmm.” Draco swept his gaze back to the list of trees and sites in the Forbidden Forest in front of him and frowned again.

Harry cocked his head. “Why couldn’t it be somewhere inside the school? The fireplace in the Slytherin common room was inside the school, but that doesn’t mean anyone stumbled over it before now. This could be another half-deserted place. Remember that the school’s been shut up for six years, without any kids running through it.”

Draco made a restless motion with one hand, which looked an awful lot like a dismissive motion. Harry tried to hold his temper and wait for the reply. “The only possible candidates are the towers. We’ve been up to Ravenclaw Tower. I think we would have found something there. And Covington has told me that the Ministry investigated the other Towers, because they wanted to add safety wards to them. They didn’t find anything.”

“Do you know how _closely_ they investigated them?” Harry asked. “The only wards I saw on the Towers were ones that people could have put up there flying on brooms. If no one’s been up there on foot…”

Draco went still. Then he turned around and said, “Harry, that’s an idea I never would have had.”

Harry flushed with pleasure, knowing as he did so that the pleasure he took from Draco’s compliment was far more than he would have taken from it if someone else had given it. He shook off the thought and said, “Well, do we know? We’d have to look at them all, I think, and go over every inch of them with a wand, but it’s a start.”

Draco nodded and stood up. “And I think we should begin with the North Tower. The reference to eternity could easily be to the Divination classes that were held there.” He made a face. “Not that it _pleases_ me to go through the ruins of Professor Trelawney’s old office, but it’s the most likely candidate I can think of. Plenty of people at the Ministry, my father told me, thought Divination was a waste of time. It’s probable that they haven’t bothered to clear out the classrooms and clean the Tower itself, since they aren’t planning to offer Divination.”

Harry took a deep breath. He felt dizzy, as if he were standing on a mountain with wind blowing around him, but that wouldn’t get him out of saying what he had to say.

“Draco.”

At the sound of his voice, Draco paused again and turned around with a curious frown. “Harry, is something wrong? You sound that way.”

“I don’t think it’s the North Tower.” Harry wanted to put his arms around Draco, but once again, he wasn’t sure how Draco would receive that gesture. Better to stay where he was for right now and make his case. “There’s no reason for it to be dark in memory, or for the riddle to talk about fire above and fire below. I—think it’s the Astronomy Tower. The stars are the fire above. The fire below would come from the models of the stars that Sinistra kept in her offices, or maybe it was just a generic reference to the fireplaces. But—you know why it would be dark in memory as well as I do.”

For a moment, Draco’s face was grey, and Harry wondered whether it was really only fear of talking to Snape again, and shame, that had kept him away from Hogwarts for this long. Then he shook his head and seemed to return to himself with a snap. “No,” he said. “That can’t be it. The riddles were set up before Dumbledore’s death. They had to be. There would be no reason for the Tower to be ‘dark in memory’ then.”

“Ah, but there would be.”

Harry started. He had been so focused on Draco that he hadn’t realized Dumbledore had come into Snape’s portrait frame. Snape was standing off to the side, looking rather put out. Dumbledore leaned forwards, hands all but braced on the frame, and studied Harry steadily.

“I can remember that I—he—brooded over Grindelwald and what had to be done to stop him on that tower,” Dumbledore said. He caught Harry’s eye. Harry nodded silently back. He was going to keep what he’d found out about Dumbledore and Grindelwald to himself, at least until a reason came along to reveal it.

Draco, Harry saw, had noticed the exchange and seemed to be frowning about it. Knowing him, he would demand an explanation sooner rather than later. Harry tried to keep from shaking his head ruefully and focused on Dumbledore instead.

“And there is one more way that the riddles could have been changed,” Dumbledore continued. “My former self trusted Severus’s former self absolutely. Severus could have altered the last riddle before he died.”

“Yes, he could have,” said Snape from the portrait behind Dumbledore, his voice so flat that Harry had no idea what he was feeling. He wasn’t sure it would have helped much more if he could have seen his face. Snape was in one of his uncompromising moods, the same way he’d been when Harry had tried to question him two years ago. “But I have no memory of it, if he did.”

Dumbledore reached back and made a patting motion with his hand. For some reason, his eyes were fixed on Harry. _Perhaps he just wants to make sure I really won’t betray his secrets,_ Harry thought. “I know, Severus. I simply wanted to alert them to the possibility.”

“He was on the Tower, too,” Draco said, in a dreamy voice that made Harry turn to him at once. Draco’s face was pasty. He looked more like the boy Harry had known than he had since he’d been that boy. “But he couldn’t know that I would be the one uncovering these riddles. Weren’t these riddles made to be solvable by anyone?” 

He was appealing to Dumbledore, Harry saw, his eyes beseeching him to say that the Astronomy Tower couldn’t be the answer because he was so desperate not to go up there again. Dumbledore bowed his head for a moment and closed his eyes before he nodded. He saw Draco’s pain and was trying his best to acknowledge it without hurting him too badly all over again, Harry thought.

“Yes,” Snape’s voice said. “But my former self was paranoid enough to have decided that the riddle was too easy. Or perhaps he intended you as his choice to solve it all along. That would be like him.” There was pride in his voice now, for some reason, Harry thought.

Draco stood there without speaking, gaze turned so inwards that Harry wasn’t sure if he would notice if Harry waved a hand in front of his face. Not that Harry was about to try. He was fairly certain Draco wouldn’t find that funny.

“I’ll try,” Draco whispered. “I _will_. But I can’t promise that I won’t collapse.”

“I’ll be there,” Harry said. “You won’t collapse, because I won’t let you.”

Draco started. _I think he forgot about me,_ Harry thought as he turned around again. _That should probably be insulting, but he can make up for it if he remembers me now and takes advantage of the offer of support._

“You don’t understand,” Draco whispered in a hiss that seemed to start from the depths of his chest. “You can’t—you don’t know what that night means to me.”

“I know,” Harry said. He would have said that the memory wasn’t all that prominent in Draco’s recollections of the school if someone had asked, because he hadn’t seen him mention it or react to it so far. And the memory of the battle on the Astronomy Tower had been slotted in, for Harry, along with all his _other_ horrible memories, something that he remembered in nightmares, but that had to wait its turn alongside the images of Sirius’s death, his mother’s death, Cedric’s body, Voldemort coming back to life, and Hermione’s screams as she was tortured. “But I can be there for you anyway.”

Draco studied him further, bending in as though he wanted to emphasize the difference in their heights. Since that difference was less than nothing, Harry glared back staunchly, until Draco whispered, “You can’t. You’re not strong enough.”

“Are _you_ about to start that nonsense of thinking of someone who likes to be bound in bed isn’t as strong as his partner?” Harry demanded in a carrying voice. He didn’t care if Dumbledore and Snape overheard, since they already knew most of the details of his and Draco’s sex life. “If you are, then I’m walking out the door.”

Draco crossed his arms. “It has nothing to do with that,” he said, though the faint flush along his cheekbones declared he was lying. “It simply means—you have so many issues to deal with, including your anger. What happens if you get angry on the Tower? Then I’m left trying to soothe you and myself at the same time.”

“There’s no reason for me to get angry there, unless someone tries to harm you,” Harry said. “And I’ve had a lot of practice in holding back anger for a short time, until I can get to someone who can help me.” 

Draco’s eyes flashed, even with everything else going on. “I had better be the _only_ one who helps you with that, in the future,” he said.

Harry licked his lips and tried to ignore the melting sensation in his stomach. It wasn’t excitement, or at least he didn’t think so. “I know,” he said. “You will be. I was saying?”

Draco nodded curt permission to go on.

“My anger can express itself in magic, or in intense physical activity,” Harry said. “And I think there’s likely to be more than enough physical activity for me, given that we’ll face another fight to the death on the Tower.”

Draco lit up. “That’s true. We will.”

“You like the idea of that?” Harry asked, and then realized he was being stupid. Draco would probably welcome anything that could create a new memory, and thus a new association, with the Tower in his mind at this point.

“Yes,” Draco said, and no more. He turned back to the portrait frame. “You’re sure that Professor Snape could have changed the riddle after you set it, Headmaster?”

“I trusted him absolutely,” Dumbledore said softly. Harry tried not to think of the basis of that trust, of the fact that it played on Snape’s guilt over failing his mother. “I’m sure.”

Draco nodded and turned away. Harry followed him, only pausing to make sure that he had his wand before they left the room.

Draco strode along the corridor with his jaw firm and his eyes shining in a fashion that promised horrible consequences for whoever got in his way. Harry followed him for a few minutes, but when Draco turned in a direction that wasn’t going to lead them to the hospital wing or Ron and Hermione’s rooms, Harry coughed. “Aren’t we going to bring Ron and Hermione in on this?” he asked. “We could probably use their help against whatever’s living in the Tower.”

“We’ll be able to handle it,” Draco said, without looking around. If anything, his stride grew longer.

“We don’t know that for certain.” Harry tried to keep his voice calm. Sometimes, Draco got on his nerves something awful, although Harry hoped those incidents wouldn’t be as frequent now that they were sleeping together. “It would make the most sense to bring them along. Do you want me to—”

Draco swung around on one heel. Harry blinked. He had to admit that he hadn’t realized Draco’s eyes could glare that fiercely. Draco would have made a good Auror, he thought inanely, and then shook his head to get rid of the fantasy.

“How much more plainly do I have to say this?” Draco’s lips were slightly parted, his hands clenched into each other. “I don’t want someone around who I don’t _trust_ , when I’m going back into a place that means as much to me as this one does.”

Harry winced. He should have been able to guess that for himself. “Oh,” he said quietly. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” Draco faced up the corridor again, his voice calming into a curious flatness, as if yelling at Harry had used up some of the nervous energy. “But that means that Weasley and Granger will just have to live without the glory of joining us.” He hesitated so short a time that Harry wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t started watching Draco a lot more closely than before. “Unless you want them to be involved, of course. Unless you’d rather join them for the evening than me.”

Harry frowned at the back of Draco’s head. This mattered to Draco, and it mattered to him, but he wished he had better words than he did. As it was, Draco was likely to accuse him of sounding sentimental or false.

But while Harry couldn’t say yet if he loved Draco, not for certain, or even liked him very much outside of bed, he knew what he said next was true.

“There’s no one I would rather fight beside than you.”

Draco half-lowered his head, and his eyes fluttered once, seen from profile. It was a minute hesitation, smaller than the one before his mocking words, but it was enough for Harry, who followed him in contented silence.

And who saw that Draco hesitated one more time, to swallow, before he took the stairs to the Astronomy Tower.

*

Draco was climbing through stone and shadow. He knew that. Harry’s idea that no one had been up to the Astronomy Tower in some time was correct. They passed through a set of wards that were meant to keep students away—Harry destroyed them with scornful ease—and dust flew around them with every step. Draco was aware of all those things, and more alert than that, waiting for the moment when the death trap promised by the last riddle would explode around them.

But he was also sixteen years old, and racing up to the Tower with his heart in his throat, caught between excitement and terror. It had worked! He had let them in! But now, he had to go up here and hope that the last part of the plan was in place. He had to kill Dumbledore. He had to _do_ it, this time, and all the nerves that he could feel trembling in the backs of his hands would just have to shut up.

Draco could remember being that young. He had never understood the people who said they couldn’t. Of course, most of those people didn’t have fear and shame acting like a permanent fire to sear the sensation into their heads.

He came out on top of the Tower, in two years, in two times, and turned his head from side to side. He had thought for sure that the ambush would happen on the steps of the Tower, and why not? It was only sense that the creatures or the wards that were part of the trap would attack them in a confined space that would make it harder for them to fight. Severus and Dumbledore wouldn’t have wanted just _anyone_ surviving a fight to the death and getting hold of the last keyword.

Instead, though, they stood in the open air without a sign of anyone or anything to oppose them. Draco frowned and glanced at his feet, prepared to see the stones cracking apart in lines of fire. Then he looked up again, in case a predatory bird stooped from above.

Nothing.

“I don’t understand,” he said slowly, and turned back to Harry. “Perhaps you’re wrong and this isn’t the right Tower after all?” Joy leaped up in his heart at that possibility, hotter and more important than what he had felt when he was a boy.

Harry was gone. Instead, Draco found himself staring into the eyes of a sixteen-year-old, his blond hair slicked back from his forehead, his hand trembling on the wand.

*

It was as though time had turned backwards and Harry was once more on the Astronomy Tower as he had been all those years ago, standing silent and mute and invisible under Dumbledore’s spells.

_Exactly_ like. He could see Draco in front of him as he was, with his eyes wide and his skin waxen but his strength and his age showing—and as he had been, with his skin so pale that he looked as if he were going to fall over at any moment and permanent lines of stress tied together around his mouth.

Between them both stood Dumbledore, his expression so sad that Harry felt a ripple pass through his heart, stirring it as nothing but anger and his feelings for Draco had stirred it in years. This was the real man, not the portrait. Harry wondered how much of the animosity he felt for the portrait came about because that shadow of Dumbledore would never be able to replace the real thing.

Harry reached out, and his hands passed through both Dracos. He shouted, but neither one heard him.

They saw each other, though. Harry couldn’t doubt that, because the teenage Draco let his eyes dart away from Dumbledore and to that older version of himself with uneasy fascination. Then he backed up and lifted his wand, as though he thought he could prevent a vision from attacking him that way.

“D-don’t come near me!” His voice cracked when he stuttered, and Harry could see the utter humiliation beaming in his eyes. The sudden pink on his cheeks probably came more from embarrassment than anything else. “I’m warning you! I’ll cast a curse, and I know Dark Arts!”

Harry darted a glance at Dumbledore to see how he would respond to that. He looked a little more grieved, but otherwise he only stood there, watching and listening.

Harry reached out again. If he was seeing this vision, there had to be some way he could affect it, wasn’t there? And it wasn’t as if they were in a Pensieve.

_Unless…_

Harry had paused to think about that, and almost missed what Draco— _his_ Draco—responded to the boy they had both known. Draco’s voice was soft and hoarse, and full of something that Harry thought was wonder and yearning. “I’m you. I’ve lived through what you’ve lived through right now. It’s going to be all right.”

The teenager stared at him. Then he shook his head. “You’re something that _he_ sent, to test me!” he said. “Or you’re something that the old man is trying to do, to distract me.” He turned away and focused on Dumbledore again. “Why did you bring him here? Send him away again. You can’t trick me.”

Harry had to close his eyes at the pride in his voice. He was sure that he hadn’t sounded much different when he was a boy, but it was still painful to realize that someone could _be_ so young.

_Or do I only think that because I know what’s going to happen next?_

“This was not my doing,” Dumbledore said, voice older than Harry had thought it would be. Of course, how much did he remember of that night on the Tower, seven years ago, compared to Draco, who seemed to remember everything? Harry was beginning to think that they stood in Draco’s memory, and that was the reason for the perfect detail on the people and the stones of the Tower. “This is a doing of the future or the past.” He shut his eyes and sighed, though his lips wore a faint smile. “Or a doing of dreams. I cannot be sure, and that makes it hard to concentrate.”

The teenage Draco looked at him angrily, as though to say that _everyone_ should be able to concentrate when it came to something about him. Harry remembered that expression, and that attitude. Fuck, Draco still had it. He had thought that he should be different from Harry’s other lovers, although all of them had been content with a quick fuck or the money that Harry could give them, or both.

“It has to be yours,” the boy said, but less sure now. He turned to Draco now and made a rude noise. “ _You_ can’t be my future, can you? You don’t look strong enough.”

Draco shook his head and seemed to come to life. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice soft but controlled, rather than breaking out furiously the way Harry thought he would if he was faced with a past self this ignorant. “I’m your future the best way it could turn out, without being dead or in exile or in Azkaban.”

The boy’s face lost all its color again. “No,” he whispered. “No, he’s going to win, I know he is.”

_No need to translate the “he_ ,” Harry thought, and he could only imagine that that must be even more true for Draco, who would remember every sensation of this moment with clear and painful intensity. 

“He’s not,” Draco said. His voice was calm and quiet, cool, the same tone that he used sometimes to give Harry orders. He must hope that he could reach his past self this way, Harry thought, and then wondered why. If they were in the middle of a memory, then Draco wouldn’t be able to change anything. “You always knew that. I know the secret moments of doubt that you’ve had in the middle of the night, doubt that you’re doing the right thing, for yourself or your family, even if you obey his crazy demands. I _am_ you. All your thoughts are mine. Why shouldn’t I know this?”

“Shut up!” the boy screamed, and swept his wand up and down. “Just shut up!”

Dumbledore coughed and said something that Harry lost in the sound of the teenage Draco casting curses. _His_ Draco darted around them and then got behind the boy, pinning his arms to his sides and saying something low and urgent into his ear.

Harry couldn’t stand it anymore. It had been bad enough to be imprisoned once outside this event, when he couldn’t help but thought he _might_ have been able to if Dumbledore had let him intervene. He wasn’t going to let it happen again. He began to circle the edges of the Tower, looking for the passage into the memory that Draco had found.

*

“Listen, you little shit,” Draco said. He knew it would get the boy’s attention, because no one except the Dark Lord and other Death Eaters had ever spoken to him like that at that age, and even they usually used more deferential language, concerned about offending Lucius through his son. “You have no idea what you’re doing. This is a mistake that you’ll regret for the rest of your life. Professor Snape wasn’t trying to steal your glory when he told you that you couldn’t do this alone; he was telling you the simple truth, and offering his help. Put the wand down, and everything can be different.”

He was barely aware of what he was saying; the words leaped through his lips and hurried into his younger self’s ears without anything like a plan. He _had_ to say them. His mind was spinning with memories overlaid by the new reality that seemed to be taking place around him, and if he had a chance to make a difference and change some of the consequences that stemmed from that night, he would.

Of course, he might cease to exist if his past self really did act differently. Or he might lose his relationship with Harry, or his Potions mastery, or the knowledge that he had gained from Severus, or anything else beautiful and pleasant that carried him through his days. One of the lessons that his parents had made sure to teach him young was that anything beautiful and pleasant had a price that must be paid for it, and goodness and evil—in the sense of personal benefits—were linked together in a thousand ways. You had to suffer through education and the torments of homework and boredom and repetition in order to learn how to cast powerful spells. You had to listen to people you didn’t like or respect or pay your dues until you arrived in a position where they would have to listen to you. You had to spend money and time making potential allies trust you. There was always time to be paid, if nothing else, and the list of prices went on. Draco knew that he might be condemning himself, and perhaps Harry and Dumbledore, to a price that he couldn’t bear.

But he couldn’t help himself. The instinct was too strong, to intervene and tell himself how it _was_ and how it _should be_ and offer the benefit of superior experience to his younger self. To take the shortcut, if he found it.

That was the Slytherin way.

The boy struggled against him, all angles and elbows and legs and ribs. Draco remembered himself that way, and he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. He tightened his arms instead, and kept whispering. He no longer heard what he said; he wasn’t sure that he would have wanted to. The important thing was that he kept his voice running, and the boy struggling against him was, for the moment, still in his grasp. He still had the potential to change things, somehow. Draco had to believe that, or he would have given up and simply sat down and laughed in despair.

Someone’s hands touched him.

Draco started and reared back, intent on throwing off the unknown attacker much as _he_ was intent on throwing Draco off. And sure enough, the boy squirmed free a moment later and faced him, panting, eyes so brilliant and angry that Draco winced in spite of himself at what looked out of them.

Then he realized that Harry was standing beside him—Harry, whom he had somehow missed at the start of the memory, or the vision, or the dream, or whatever it was that surrounded them here. Draco knew that he wanted it to be time-travel, but he also knew that it was more than likely not to be.

“Harry?” he whispered. “Where did you come from?”

“From right over there,” Harry said, nodding at what looked to be the empty stones of the Tower. Hadn’t Dumbledore been there a moment ago? Draco wondered, but he didn’t have the time to look, because he couldn’t turn away from the brilliant conflagration of Harry’s eyes. “I was locked outside the memory at first, and then I went back down the stairs, came up them, and thought of the exact same thing you were probably thinking about, that night. I think the trap Dumbledore and Snape set was triggered to go off when that happened.”

Draco shook his head. He was still upset and shaken, and he still didn’t understand most of the thoughts that wanted to rush through his head. “I don’t—why the _fuck_ would they want to create a trap like this if they knew the chances were excellent that someone they _trusted_ would walk through it?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. He kept his voice low and soothing and didn’t turn to look at the boy Draco could feel watching them with wide eyes. “But perhaps they couldn’t be sure of the kind of people we would be when we came back. Perhaps they had to be sure, before they started to let us into the secrets.”

Draco was about to protest that that was ridiculous, but he stopped with a grimace. Yes, he could see Severus being paranoid enough for that, and Dumbledore thinking of it as one of his insane “tests.” Draco had no idea what Dumbledore would still be testing them for, when he was on the brink of death in this memory or knew that he was going to die soon as he was constructing the riddles, but that seemed to be his way. 

“Yes,” Draco said. “Fine. All right.” He gestured at the teenager who had an odd expression on his face, anger mixed with complex sadness and frustration. Draco wondered why, but had the feeling that he wouldn’t like the answer that he could feel rising in the back of his mind, and didn’t pursue it. “But what are we supposed to do about him? Why are we here—now—at this time, whenever we are? How are we supposed to break through this and get the keyword to the wards?”

“What are you talking about?” the boy demanded, his eyes darting back and forth between them. “Why is _Potter_ with you?”

“I’m his friend,” Harry said, his hand pressing down hard on Draco’s shoulder for a moment, as though he wanted to make sure that Draco didn’t break away from him and go to embrace the boy.

“And lover,” Draco said. He wouldn’t let Harry deny that to anyone, not even a vision. He rested his hand on Harry’s and glared challengingly at his teenage self.

The older—younger—Draco blinked and stared at the ground. Draco shook his head. The complexities of time-travel had always made him dizzy. He hadn’t even done well at the Arithmancy equations concerning it.

“Oh,” the boy whispered, or Draco thought he whispered. Harry had started talking, and in the wash of those words, he lost the quieter sound.

“I don’t know if we’re supposed to break through the memory in any way,” Harry said. “I think we’re here for a different purpose. I was outside the memory at first, and couldn’t break through until I stepped in a certain place on the stairs and thought as hard as I could about what you would be feeling when you walked up here.” His arms tightened around Draco. “I think we’re here to help you get over some of the trauma that you’re feeling.”

Draco stared at him, then snorted. Harry could come up with some fairly ridiculous theories, but not even Draco had envisioned anything that ridiculous. “No. That can’t be.”

“Why not?” Harry turned and paced behind Draco, making Draco tense automatically. He let his hands pass in soothing motions up and down Draco’s spine, and Draco relaxed despite himself, and despite the audience of one teenage boy and one dying old man, both of whom he kept an eye on. “If they cared enough to make sure that only we—or you—could gain access to this secret, then why wouldn’t they care enough to try and bring you past this moment? Heal you of something that even you admit still affects you?”

“Still affects you?” The younger Draco’s voice was intolerably high-pitched when one was trying to think, Draco thought. He shut his eyes, but he could still hear the voice, persisting in shrill tones. “What’s going to happen?”

“Many things,” said the vision of Dumbledore.

Draco resisted the temptation to tell the old man to shut up. It wouldn’t help anything. He swallowed and said, “But I don’t know the way to get over it. What am I supposed to _do_?” And now _he_ was whining, he thought in disgust a moment later. He bit his lip sharply and forced himself to stand there, quiet, while Harry thought.

“Well,” Harry said. “I could think of a few things. First, what was it about this night that traumatized you the most? I know that one of the reasons it took me so long to get over the fight with Ron and Hermione was that they’d been everything to me, once. There was no one else in my life who mattered so much. Was there something like that here? Was Snape—Professor Snape—so important to you that you couldn’t take what you thought of as his betrayal?”

Draco let out a sharp laugh, and then controlled himself. “What do you _mean_ , Potter?” It was easy to slip into calling Harry that again when he was faced with this very physical reminder of his past. “The whole _situation_ was the traumatizing thing. I was supposed to kill. I couldn’t kill. I saw someone who had been Headmaster of the school I was in for the past six years die, and I knew that other people were fighting, and possibly dying, down in the school because of me. And then we had to run, and I knew that the Dark Lord would be less than pleased with me because Severus had done my task instead. The whole night is a long miasma of anger and betrayal and fear.”

Harry wrapped his arms around Draco, living, warm, solid arms that Draco could hold to. It took a long moment for him to find the necessary courage, but in the end, he leaned back and let himself be supported. Harry kissed the skin under his ear.

Draco knew his younger self would be staring in horror and hatred and—yes, he could acknowledge this, remembering some of the thoughts that had risen to the surface of his mind when he looked at Harry—perhaps envy. He had never thought specifically of being Harry’s lover at that point, that he could remember, but he had certainly wanted to be closer to him than he was, and was jealous of those who were.

“Then start thinking of ways that would let you live with yourself,” Harry murmured. “Do you consider yourself a coward for running, the way I screamed at Snape that he was?”

Draco shook his head. “Running was the only reasonable thing to do in that situation. I was more scared of what I was running to than what I was running from.”

Harry nodded against his cheek. Draco felt the crisp rustle of his hair, and concentrated on that instead of his memories. “What about killing? Were you disappointed that you couldn’t bring yourself to kill Dumbledore?”

Draco licked his lips. He knew the truth, and he knew what he wanted to say. The truth might make Harry think him a horrible enough person that he wouldn’t be interested in talking to Draco again.

Then he told himself not to be ridiculous. He had already forced his way into Harry’s confidence and his bed. If Harry backed away from him because of Gryffindor morality, then Draco would simply win him back once more. And after the way he had been willing to curse his best friends, Draco no longer thought him as delicate as he had once been.

“I was disappointed at the time,” he said quietly. “And I still am, I suppose. I wanted to show that I had what it took to be taken seriously by the other Death Eaters. Someone who couldn’t cast the Killing Curse mattered less than some of the vampires the Dark Lord was recruiting as allies.”

“I didn’t cast the Killing Curse, either,” Harry said at once, his voice low but comforting—all the more comforting because it was hard, factual, as though he didn’t really care about Draco’s feelings. “Remember? I defeated the Dark Lord with a simple spell that a second-year could have used. That a second-year _did_ use, more than once,” he added, probably thinking about the way he had used it.

“But you didn’t have to,” Draco said. “The Elder Wand—things worked out the way they did in a strange fashion. Without that coincidence, you would have had to use it.”

“I know,” Harry said. “But I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that, because that’s _not_ what happened.” His arms tightened. “And you should know that the reason that situation occurred is because of this night on the Tower. I said that much when I was dancing around the Great Hall with Voldemort, remember? You made my victory possible.”

Warmth hit Draco and spread all around the center of his chest like a breaking wave. He reached up a hand that trembled and settled it on Harry’s arm. He had never thought about it—he had never thought about it that way.

_Even my thoughts are stuttering._

He had been angry enough at himself over this night for the reasons he had stated to Harry, but also because it had seemed such a _waste_. What did he gain from confronting Dumbledore before the others arrived? Nothing, either the glory of the kill or credit for courage, not when his arm had lowered.

But to know that he had made Harry’s victory possible, that _he_ had contributed to saving people, to doing something grand that people still praised Harry for…

Draco bowed his head and smiled slightly.

“You have my smile,” the teenager in front of him said.

Draco blinked and looked up. Strangely, he had almost forgotten the boy over the last few moments. He had been absorbed in hearing that he was important to Harry, and from there, his mind had started to spread in other, new directions. Such as that this new claim he had on Harry, this new importance he had registered in Harry’s life, wasn’t so new after all, and he had the right to say that he had always been there. 

Their connection ran deep, and Draco never needed to feel like an alien or an intruder, the way that Weasley and Granger’s sometimes hostile gazes said they considered him.

“Is this what’s coming?” the boy Draco whispered, his gaze locked on their joined hands. Draco imagined, with a sudden flash of empathy, what he would have felt if someone had told him that Potter was willing to be intimate with a different version of himself—just not Draco as he currently was. “Really? Can you promise me that?”

“I don’t know,” Draco said gently. “I don’t know that your future is going to be the same as mine.” He didn’t know if the boy was real, come to that, if he was back in the past or only in the falsely constructed memory that Harry seemed to think Dumbledore and Severus would have left as the bait for a trap. “But you could make a future that’s even better, in your own way, if you just try.”

Harry nodded encouragingly past his shoulder. “You have to be willing to try,” he echoed.

Draco arched his head back and kissed Harry. Those words had undone him. Harry had no reason to remember this younger Draco fondly; the words he had spoken to comfort and soothe Draco just now were the words to an acknowledged lover. They didn’t know if this Draco was _real_. But he had tried, anyway, with compassion that was one of the reasons Draco felt bound to him.

_In love with him?_

_Who knows, yet._

The Tower appeared to pivot around them. Draco felt as though the stones were melting beneath his feet and then reforming themselves in interlocked patterns. He would have stumbled or at least sought support, but Harry was there, and he had one hand locked into place beneath Draco’s hip and one arm around his shoulders.

The night tingled with a thousand stars. Draco opened his eyes and saw the teenage Draco of the past lowering his wand, his face filled with uncertainty.

He also caught a glimpse—though it didn’t matter as much to him as the former image did—of Dumbledore staring at them with deep delight and satisfaction, nodding his head.

*

Harry gasped and opened his eyes. They stood alone on the Tower now, the stars blazing softly overhead, the memory faded like a dream. He looked cautiously around, wondering if it was possible that there were two traps up here, and they would have to face the second in a fight to the death at any moment.

But then he thought of what might have happened to Draco if he wasn’t there, and accepted that there was more than one way to fight to the death.

Draco let the kiss go reluctantly, leaning heavily on Harry. His eyes were dark in the way that Harry had only seen them in the bedroom so far, and when Draco reached up and pushed shining fingers against his cheek, he gasped, half in shock. It seemed that Draco was aflame with desire, right here, right now.

“Thank you,” Draco whispered.

Harry nodded. “You’re—welcome,” he said, and hoped that he managed to say it without his voice cracking. He had, right? He didn’t want to check to make sure. “And now, don’t you think we should look for the riddle and the keyword?”

“Only keyword, this time.” Draco’s fingers stroked his chest, heading teasingly towards a nipple for a moment, and then pulling back. “This is the last riddle.”

Harry blinked. “Right,” he said. He had known that, too. God, he was _out_ of it, and he didn’t know why. He wasn’t the one who had had to face his past self or have a major revelation about himself today. He pulled Draco upright and looked around for another bubble containing a twist of parchment like the ones that had held the riddles and keywords so far.

One moment it wasn’t there, and then it was. The bubble appeared with a shimmer and a gleam like that of soap bubbles, and Harry bent down to retrieve it. Draco’s hand glanced over his arse on the way. Harry grunted, half in shock, and stood up to glare at him.

Draco shrugged back unapologetically. “You know what I want, Harry,” he said, and his eyes shone like the bubble. “You’ll have to be a little louder about making your own desires heard.”

Harry shook his head and dragged him off the Astronomy Tower. He had questions to ask Dumbledore’s portrait, and a conversation to have with his best friends. And he and Draco needed to decide how they would handle the Ministry’s demand that would doubtless come for them to turn over the keywords to the wards.

And after that…

He and Draco would have to speak. Harry had no idea what he was feeling right now, no idea if he would want to continue their relationship or not. Perhaps, yes, as long as he could feel desire.

But Harry knew how quickly desire could burn out. Every time he had had sex in the last few years, he had felt free of it the moment he had come and his anger had calmed down for the next few months.

_Every time except for the last time._

Harry physically hunched to chase the thought away from him. He would get Draco to the bottom of the stairs _first_ , and then he would worry about the other problems.

*

“I told you that it doesn’t matter,” Draco said patiently. He had to wonder at how thick Harry could be. He had seemed smarter than this when they were up on the top of the Tower.

Then he remembered that this was the same man who had let the disapproval of his best friends ruin his life for years, and snorted softly. Yes, well, he could see traces of that man in the stubborn mask that faced him now.

“It’s—” Harry shook his head and stuck out his lower lip. Draco knew that he probably only did it because he was thinking, but it made him want to bite Harry. That, and the memory of those words Harry had spoken on the Tower, were enough to make him hard again. He had to turn his attention to the wall and examine it attentively so he wouldn’t embarrass himself. “Someone _has_ to notice what you’ve done to Covington, Draco. Your potion may be undetectable, but she won’t act like herself.”

“She will if I command her to cover up what happened and act as though she’s normal, except for obeying my instructions,” Draco said. “Here, her reputation as someone who keeps her goals silent and her methods slippery—someone who was in Slytherin—will work against her. They might not understand what she’s doing, but they’ll assume that she has a long-range goal in mind that will benefit herself, no matter what it is. Advocating that they open Hogwarts again and start to hand control over to the school governors and the professors won’t be the strangest thing an employee of the Ministry has done. In fact, I’m sure there are factions in the Ministry who favor that and will support her.”

Harry gave him a faint smile. “I reckon you’re right,” he said. “I never bothered to understand politics much.”

“You don’t need to, now,” Draco said comfortably. “You have me.”

Harry paused, his brow furrowing. Draco sighed in disgust. “Yes, you do. Unless you’re going to let your friends’ opinions influence you even now, and you’ll shove me away so that you can embrace them.” He didn’t care about the jealousy in his voice. That encounter on the Tower ought to have taught Harry that he was important to Draco, which meant Draco didn’t have to expend as much effort on hiding his emotions. 

“It’s not—that,” Harry said. “Not exactly.”

“I hope it isn’t some renewal of the shame of being with me, either,” Draco said, as quickly as he could.

“No,” Harry said. “But I have to wonder if you’ll want to be with me when we’ve fucked a few more times.” His face turned red. “I can’t change that much, Draco. I don’t have the sexual experience you do. When you realize that you can find someone else who can match you, when you’ve had me a few times, will you really want to stay with me? That’s the problem with a relationship based primarily on lust.” He tried to laugh, but the laughter caught in his throat.

Draco reached out and put a hand on Harry’s cheek, turning his head back and forth. Harry fell silent but kept his obstinate eyes locked on Draco’s face. Draco wondered for a moment what it would be like to live with such pessimism, hating what you had to do to keep yourself under control and alive, and, when you did finally find a solution to the problem, having to think that it wouldn’t last.

Draco had gone through horrible things in his life, but he had been an optimist compared to Harry. Amusing, when you considered their various histories.

_Or perhaps simply understandable._

“Listen to me,” Draco murmured. “I will stay with you. We’ll work on your anger together. We’ll discuss other means of relating than pure sex. I’m willing to believe that it will be difficult, yes. But I am not willing to give up.”

Harry jerked a little, as though he wanted to remove his face from Draco’s palm but didn’t have the physical strength to do so. “I didn’t—I didn’t say I would,” he muttered. He seemed interested in all these subtle distinctions, Draco thought. He didn’t know why. As _he_ saw it, only one thing was of importance, the fact that Harry wanted to go away and Draco didn’t want him to. “But I’ve started out with the best intentions in the world sometimes, always thinking when I walked away from each new bed that I wouldn’t need the fucking again, and something always proved me wrong.”

“That was your problem, then,” Draco said, his hand itching to slap Harry. He managed to keep the urge down, but the temptation filled his lungs like heavy smoke. “You thought this would end. You thought of the fucking as the means to an end and no more. You didn’t want to build a real relationship.”

Harry’s eyes fired, but still he didn’t move away. “You might be right,” he said. “But it’s presumptuous and arrogant to think that you’re the one who will make me different, isn’t it?”

“Presumptuous and arrogant is _me_ ,” Draco said, and leaned forwards to capture Harry’s lips. Harry held stiff and stubborn against him for a moment, and then leaned forwards with a little moan and kissed him back.

Draco pulled Harry closer still and whispered, “You can touch me, too. You don’t have to wait for an engraved invitation.”

Harry groaned hungrily and reached down to grip and stroke Draco’s cock. Draco rested against the wall, shutting his eyes so that he could focus on the sensation more strongly. Harry’s fingers were too quick and too rough and pulled in ways that made Draco squirm and hiss in discomfort. But it hardly mattered when Harry’s breath also rasped against his cheek, hushed and violent, and his eyes were fixed on Draco’s face whenever Draco looked.

Draco came in triumph, and kissed Harry again as Harry spelled his pants clean. Then Harry muttered, “We just turned to sex again. We can’t use that to solve _every_ argument.”

“No,” Draco agreed, fluttering his eyes reluctantly open. He would have liked to go to sleep in Harry’s arms right there, but he knew that it wasn’t a good idea. “Just most of them.”

“Draco—”

Dropping to one’s knees and taking Harry’s cock in one’s mouth was an excellent means of shutting him up, as Draco discovered a moment later.

_I know there are going to be problems,_ he thought in the moments before he lost himself completely to the taste of slick, salty skin. _But unlike Harry, I refuse to worry about them until they get here. That’s all._

*

“Oh, Harry.”

Harry smiled uneasily. Hermione could sound like that for lots of reasons. She might disapprove of the sex flush that Harry could still feel on his face. Or maybe she knew what Draco had done to Covington and disapproved of that. Or maybe she saw the determined set of his jaw and feared what he would say.

_All of those involve disapproval or fear,_ Harry thought as he leaned down to kiss her cheek. _Maybe that should tell me something._

He sat down next to her and cast a glance at the bedroom door. Ron’s snores came from behind it, familiar from their time in Hogwarts as children.

_As children. I can’t go back there, not now that I’m an adult._

“How’s Ron?” he asked.

“He’s fine,” Hermione said. “Only a bit tired from some of the potions that he had to take. And if you had waited for him to be fully recovered, then we could have joined you in finding the answer to the riddle.”

Yes, her voice was as reproachful as her face. Harry shifted uneasily and wondered what he could do or say to appease her. Then he shook his head. Why should he worry about appeasing her? He had come here to say a certain thing, and he had already known that Hermione wouldn’t take it well.

“I don’t think it’s going to work,” he said.

Hermione frowned. “What? Finding the riddle? But I thought you already did, from that look in your eyes.”

Harry experienced a crawling sensation in his skin and shook his head again. Once, he would have been happy that Hermione could read him so well, or at least accepted it as a natural consequence of their friendship. Now, it bothered hm. Why was that? Why should it trouble him that she had a friend’s privilege?

“Listen,” he said. “I’m not coming back to the wizarding world. I’m going back to the edges when this is done, to resume my old job.”

“Why?” Hermione asked softly. “We could find you a place to live. We could find you another job.” Her eyes were already bright with the planning for Harry’s future. “And someone you could work with—I mean, if you wanted to—to…solve your other problems.”

“I know you could,” Harry said, and tried to ignore the feeling that crept like a finger down his skin. What he was doing would hurt Hermione and Ron, but he _had_ to do this, in hope that it would help them all later. “But, Hermione, I don’t want that. We can’t go back to what we were as if this row had never happened. I want to give myself some time to get used to not despising my own actions, and I need time and privacy away from you.”

Hermione’s mouth fell open. But she either hadn’t absorbed the implications of his words fully, or had decided not to let him see her pain. She shook her head. “Harry, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Most of this is my fault,” Harry said. He was willing to admit that. “I thought you were partially right. I didn’t want help for my problems, but I did think they were problems, even when I was indignantly telling you that they weren’t.” He frowned at the floor. It was hard to say this, which was one reason he had come to speak to his friends without Draco. Draco would want to speak _for_ Harry, so that he could protect him, and as nice as the impulse was, Harry couldn’t let him do that. “Then I tried to repair our friendship too fast, by forgiving and forgetting everything. But I haven’t. I still look at you, and remember what you said, and resent your interference in my life. And I wanted—I wanted to demand other things from you when we had that reconciliation conversation, and I didn’t. Even though I had told Draco I would.”

“He ordered you to demand them, I reckon, and you didn’t.” Hermione’s voice was shrill, the color in her cheeks high. Only someone who knew her—or had known her—as well as Harry did would see the trembling tears behind her eyes. “Don’t you see that’s a _good_ thing, Harry? He shouldn’t be able to control you like a slave.”

“No,” Harry said. “I wanted them, I thought of them on my own, and I didn’t say them. I was worried about hurting you. But—to heal, Hermione, I have to stop worrying as much about that. And then I can start worrying about it again. I was trying to be friends with you, these last few days, on false terms. I was relieved when you weren’t working with us. I was tense and anxious when you were.”

Hermione stared openly at him now. “Harry,” she whispered. “Even _Malfoy_ got along better with us than that.”

Harry nodded. “But he didn’t have the history with you that I did,” he said. “The close friendship, and then the splitting apart. You’re—you’re all mixed and tangled up in my head with the parts of myself that I despise, Hermione. I think I’m slowly getting over them, but it’ll take more time and more work than I thought it would when I tried to charge back into friendship with you. I want to _go away_. The thought of talking with Ron fills me with dread. I’m fearful of the time when you start interfering in my life again. I don’t trust that you won’t.”

“You don’t trust us, in other words.” Hermione’s fingers knotted together.

Harry shook his head. “No. And you deserve to be trusted, at least if you really are the kind of people I always thought you were when we were at Hogwarts together.” He took a deep breath. He knew what he had to say, he thought he did, but it didn’t excuse the way that Hermione seemed to flinch as if from blows. “I really do want to trust you,” he whispered. “I promise. But it’ll need more time. There was _nothing_ , for two whole years, except my brooding on the thought of how much I hated you. And now—I want your friendship back again, but I can’t have it, not the way it was. I’ll go away for a little while. I’ll owl you. I’ll visit once a month or so, and then make it more often. But right now, with everything else I’m trying to keep in mind and get used to and reconcile, I can’t do this, too.”

Hermione gave a complicated mutter in which Harry could only pick out the word “weak.”

“Yes, I am,” Harry said, and smiled a little as she gave him a look of shocked surprise. “I know. I wouldn’t have been able to admit that a while ago. But—Hermione, I do think you’re right about some things. I don’t _know_ why I’ve been so angry since the war. I still don’t. I only know what soothes it, and that I think Draco can help me permanently, when no one else has been able to.” He winced, paused to shoulder the burden, and then pushed on. “Maybe you’re even right that the abuse I endured, and the manipulation, had something to do with the way I express my sexuality. But I can’t think about that right now. I’m too close to it. I’ll have to go away, think, and approach it carefully. And I can’t give up Draco. I can’t.” Harry thought he had done a good job, yesterday, of hiding how much the idea of Draco leaving him dropped him into utter, cold desolation. But he had believed that was what would happen. He had needed Draco’s denials otherwise, but he hadn’t been fishing for them.

“What you’re telling me,” Hermione said, pausing several times along the way as if she thought that Harry would speak up and contradict her, “is that it’s complex.”

Harry smiled at her. Sometimes, after all, she did know the right words. “Yes.”

Hermione took a deep breath. “I think that it would be better if you worked with Mind-Healers,” she said. “You gave up on them too quickly, Harry, and you were too convinced that you either had no problems or that you had to handle them on your own. You can try again.”

Harry listened to the echo of her words in his head, and then smiled in wonder. He no longer felt the fear and resentment he would have a short time ago. He could consider what she was saying more objectively.

Because he knew he would be going away, and he no longer felt _compelled_ to be her friend in the way he had a few days ago, when he had thought he was going to repair everything, change everything, go back to being exactly as he had been.

He wasn’t their friend exactly as he had been. The relief he felt when he thought of leaving them behind at Hogwarts, and the way he hadn’t missed them when he and Draco went to the Astronomy Tower, said that.

“Maybe I can consider that,” he said. “It’s something I wouldn’t have given much consideration to before, just because it was your suggestion. But with some time and distance, then it might sound better.”

Hermione went very still. Harry wondered if his complaints and threats were finally becoming real to her, now that he was speaking them in a calm, happy voice and not begging to be brought back together with his friends.

“This is your dream, though,” she said. “Hogwarts is your home, Harry. You’ve told me that more than once.”

“I’ve had a few years to find another home,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t call the house I have now perfect, but I like what I do, and I’ll do it even better when I don’t have anger preying on my mind most of the time. I’ll have Draco, and that changes a lot of things. I can come back to Hogwarts for visits, but I don’t need it to be my home anymore.”

“I thought you did,” Hermione said. “I thought you always would.” Harry discovered that it was hard to make out emotions in her voice.

Harry shrugged a bit. “Well, now I don’t. I hope that you and Ron stay here, though. I think you’ll be great teachers, and someone will need to watch and make sure that the Ministry doesn’t try to take over again, the way they’ve done in the past. You and Ron are vigilant. You’ll think of some way around them if they do.”

“Mate? What’s going on?”

Harry turned. Ron had opened his bedroom door and stood there on the threshold, staring at Harry. He paused to wipe some sleep away from his eyes, then came closer, his gaze fastened questioningly on Harry’s face.

“I’m leaving,” Harry said. “I hope to visit and to owl you, and maybe you can come and visit me when you feel you’re ready. But I don’t think I can stay here. I was trying to recover a fantasy of friendship. But fantasies are easy to break, and not so easy to fulfill.”

Ron paused. Harry wondered if he was injured; as with Hermione’s tone, Ron’s face was hard to read. But then he shook his head and said, “I’m glad.”

“ _Ron_ ,” Hermione hissed urgently. She seemed to think that Ron’s declaration would hurt Harry’s feelings.

Harry smiled at his best friend, though—his first friend. He couldn’t forget that, no matter how much solace he found with Draco. The problem was that it couldn’t keep meaning exactly what it had to an eleven-year-old child, either, because he was no longer that child. “What do you mean?”

“We’re adults now,” Ron said. “We’ve made lives here, and our peace with the Ministry, but I don’t think you can.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t want to, anyway. Maybe I could, with a lot of time and effort, but I’m not willing to invest that.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m willing to put a lot of effort into building a new friendship with you two, though. Just not in resurrecting the dying corpse of the old one.”

Ron nodded. “The dead should stay dead.” He crossed the room and clasped Harry’s hand. Harry looked up fearlessly into his face. His dread of Hermione had melted away, and he no longer felt the weary impatience that he had around Ron in the last week, as though he was waiting for the next hurtful thing to emerge from his mouth and could do nothing else around him. Now, he could see that Ron had good qualities, was clever in his own way and protective of Hermione and Hogwarts, was grounded in and committed to the wizarding traditions that Harry had left behind. It was the life that Harry had once imagined he wanted.

But it wasn’t his life now. It was best to leave and build the good parts of that life into a new, stronger one when he could.

“I can’t say that I’m surprised, either,” Ron continued. “You know that we can’t accept Malfoy, and you need him.”

Harry held back the immediate response he wanted to make to that, and then finally said, “I hope that you’ll be able to accept him someday. But it’s best if you have the chance to get to know him through my owls and a few visits. We can’t expect you to get over your animosity towards him at once, and I don’t expect him to accept you just like that, either. It’s the reason that I didn’t let him come with me,” he added, deciding that it would do them no harm to hear that. “I knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold back on the insults, no matter how much he might want to be mature.”

“I don’t think that desire is very strong,” Hermione muttered.

Ron was the one who flashed her a chiding look and nodded to Harry. “I can see that, mate. I can’t say that I understand your choice, and I think you’re wrong about how soon we can accept him. But I don’t know that for certain.”

Harry nodded back and stood up. Nothing had to be certain yet, he reminded himself. The future hadn’t arrived. Ron might be right, and Harry would have to keep his friends and his lover apart. But nothing had been _proven_ on that score. They’d had only a few days of close association, and those were in circumstances so tense that Harry didn’t blame Ron for being gloomy.

“Thanks,” he said quietly, shook Ron’s hand, and hugged Hermione. She hung on to him tightly, and Harry thought she would have retained him if she could, but Ron’s hand on her shoulder made her step back.

“I just hope this isn’t a mistake, Harry,” she said.

Harry gave her a temperate smile in return and shut the door of their rooms behind him.

*

Draco closed his eyes for a moment, and then smiled. He could feel the control that the potion gave him over Covington as a tight, thrumming bond stretched between the two of them, like a cord he could pull on to manipulate her limbs. He turned his head up to face the ceiling and exhaled slowly, then nodded once and sent forth the commands that made her stand up and turn around to face the gathered professors of Hogwarts and the witnesses who had come from the Ministry. The words that formed in her mouth and then spilled over her tongue were of Draco’s making, and though some of the witnesses from the Ministry exchanged uneasy glances and shifted as if they didn’t know what to make of this, they didn’t surge forwards and start shouting about treachery.

That meant they had won, Draco considered.

“Hogwarts was once the greatest school of magic in the world,” Covington said. “It has been closed for the past six years as we sought to make it safer and redress some of the errors of our predecessors.” Draco could feel her sweating. This was the part where she _wanted_ to say something completely different. Doubtless there would be a lot of that in the speech that was coming up. 

Draco didn’t care. She had paid the price for attempting to hurt Harry. She ought to have known what stupidity she was performing even as she inflicted it on herself.

“Dumbledore was the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts has ever known,” Covington continued, “but he was not perfect.” Draco had decided to go with that tactic in the end, as fun as it would have been to make Covington praise Dumbledore without reserve. Someone would have become suspicious if she did, and Draco never intended to have his meddling discovered. “He would have urged us to think carefully about our actions in the future, because there is little else more damaging than damage to education and the future of our world.”

The crowd nodded. They were grouped around the lake in front of Hogwarts, and Covington was standing on a boulder. She looked around as though she was concerned that not everyone could hear her. Draco was the only one who could feel her shifting against the bonds that tied her, seeking desperately for some way past them.

There was no escape, and in the end, she fell back into despair and continued with the patter that required nothing of her but her tongue and lips.

“In the future, we shall be more careful about what we teach our youngsters. Houses will not be permitted to stay apart in isolation and prejudice. Professors will bring them together and teach the ideals of the Founders—as well as the proper historical context of those ideals. We can no more live by purely Gryffindor rules than we can live by purely Slytherin ones, but all children should be allowed to have pride in their Houses.”

More judicious nodding. Covington turned to face Hogwarts and drew out the silver key to the Headmaster’s office that the keywords had released from one version of the Room of Requirement, once Harry and Draco had spoken all four together in front of the door on the seventh floor. The Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor had been in the same room. Draco had been amused to see the way Covington’s eyes shone when she lifted them out. Even enslaved to Draco, it seemed that she didn’t forget her love for luxuries and powerful artifacts.

“We will go forwards into a new future,” Covington said. “With the Ministry working closely with the Headmaster and the school governors, there is nothing we might not accomplish. And I am pleased to announce that the first Headmistress of the school will be none other than the candidate we are sure Headmaster Dumbledore had meant to announce, had he lived: Minerva McGonagall.”

The Ministry flunkies’ mouths hung open. McGonagall herself looked shaky and pale as she climbed up to receive the key from Covington. But she had been the best choice, Harry and Draco had both agreed, and Covington would be able to come up with the right lies to convince anyone who was shocked of the validity of her choice—the popular perception of Dumbledore, the need to acknowledge the continuity of his choices, and so on.

“Congratulations,” Covington said with a stiff smile.

McGonagall took the key and examined it for a few minutes. Then she visibly straightened to take up her new burden. Draco shook his head. That was Gryffindors for you, always thinking they had to do their duty no matter what. McGonagall could have refused and gone on to a peaceful, quiet retirement, but neither Harry nor Draco had ever really thought she would.

“Better her than me,” Harry, standing beside Draco in the third rank of watchers, muttered.

Draco nudged him hard with one shoulder. “You would be a disastrous Headmaster,” he whispered. “They’re supposed to last a few decades at least, and you would get yourself killed flying around the Astronomy Tower, or something equally ridiculous.”

“Or they’d find me bound to a bed and fucked to death by an overeager Slytherin,” Harry murmured back.

Draco couldn’t help the way his hand shook for a moment on Harry’s back. And when had his hand got there? He couldn’t remember reaching out. Harry only cocked his head wisely and fastened his eyes on McGonagall again. She was making some gracious speech now about how this honor was unexpected but she would do her best to support the burden and do a good job. The people around them were applauding politely, for the most part, but Draco could hear genuine enthusiasm among them.

“The Ministry will support the new Headmistress,” Covington said, with the assurance of tone that said she would personally take over that task.

Draco chuckled. She struggled more fiercely than ever when he made her say that. Harry winced beside him, and Draco glanced at him.

“I just wonder if it’s right,” Harry said, his eyes fastened on Covington. “To make her a slave for the rest of her life.”

Draco shook his head. “That’s what she would have done to you. Unless you think that she would have had a qualm of conscience in a few years. But even then, would she dare to release you? The first thing you would have done was turn on her. By that point, your anger and your magic would have built up to the point where they needed the release.”

Harry grimaced, but not in a way that said he resented Draco’s presumption. “I know,” he said. “I know that you can’t release her for the same reason.”

Draco smiled, glad that Harry had seen the drift of his argument before he had to make it. Harry wasn’t unintelligent. He simply didn’t allow himself to exercise his intelligence much. Too much hanging back when he was young and trusting Granger to come up with pronouncements and explanations, Draco thought.

Well, no partner of his was going to do the same thing. So far, Draco had demanded at least one exercise of Harry’s intelligence every day, and he intended to go on doing the same thing for day after day.

Until Harry left him, perhaps, or started realizing that Draco admired him for more than his ability to gasp when fucked.

“Yes,” Draco said. “Perhaps it’s more than she deserves. Perhaps she would have done something more than _Obliviate_ you afterwards, to keep herself safe, so that she _could_ release you. But I don’t think so. I think that, once you were leashed, the Ministry would have found you too convenient and supportive to let go. They must have told you more than once that you would do them, and the whole of the wizarding world, good if you just let yourself be chained.”

*

Harry chuckled in spite of himself, and the discomfort curling through his gut. Yes, they had told him that, and in almost the same words. “Do you think they don’t have consciences, then?” _Like you?_ he almost added, but he knew that wasn’t the case. There were some things Draco wouldn’t do; he did have a sense of right and wrong. But he saw no reason to leave an enemy alive at his back.

Draco snorted. “I think they’re political. A political advantage like the Boy-Who-Lived is too great to let go.”

“But you aren’t trying to use me that same way,” Harry said, with a ripple of discomfort, but feeling at the same time that Draco _had_ to have thought of this before Harry brought it up. “Why not?”

Draco turned to face him, and seemed to dismiss Covington from his mind, despite the fact that he must have told her what to say. His hand curled around Harry’s wrist and dragged him closer. Harry flushed, with more than embarrassment, but with embarrassment on top of that. He hated the fact that a simple touch could excite him so much.

“Because I know that you wouldn’t stay with me if I tried to use you without your full cooperation,” Draco whispered. “And I want you to stay with me more than I want any petty political gain that I might win with your help.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. It was an answer he understood, appreciated, even; the difficulty was in believing that it was true. He had shoved away people before Draco because he hadn’t wanted to go through the pain of finding out that it wasn’t, as well as because he had been ashamed of what he was and what he desired.

Draco ran a tender hand down his cheek. “If you’re going to leave me,” he whispered, “I’d hope that you’d tell me. Trust me that much. I would be angry, but I already know that I couldn’t hold you back.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

“Your magic is so much stronger than mine,” Draco responded, giving him a strange look, as if he couldn’t believe that Harry didn’t know that.

Harry smiled. In some ways, it was good to have a Slytherin lover, one who wasn’t shy to acknowledge power imbalances.

“Which is, among other things, what makes it so wonderful to watch you crush the impulse to conquer and yield to me instead,” Draco finished, with a self-satisfied smile.

Harry rolled his eyes. _And then there’s_ this _side to having a Slytherin lover._

*

“I didn’t expect it to work out this way. My dear boy. I did hope that you would find your way back to Hogwarts, but under rather different circumstances.”

Harry drew a deep breath as he faced Dumbledore’s portrait. Complicated emotions stirred in his chest. He wanted to say that he understood Dumbledore’s concerns, but despised them; he was beyond the simple boy who could be manipulated to find his happiness and the greatest good. And then he wanted to turn his back and walk away without another word. Hermione was right. Surely the old man’s manipulations had contributed to at least some of his anger and his inability to fit in.

But the man who had done all that to Harry was dead. Harry had come closer to him in the memory trap that waited at the top of the Astronomy Tower than he had in this portrait, who was only a fragment and a lesser version, not the whole man repeated over again in miniature. Dumbledore had been wise and brave and clever and foolish all together. This portrait had little power to make himself as wonderful and as terrible in the eyes of the living.

“I came back,” he said. “And I think that now I’ve come back once, I’ll visit more often. It was this place of fear to me, and I didn’t think that I could do anything to change what the Ministry would do. But now that I’ve been here once, it will be easier to come back.”

Dumbledore nodded and touched his beard as though he was thinking. “And—forgive me, my boy, but I must ask this. Are you going to sacrifice your chances of a normal life to a life with Mr. Malfoy?”

Harry gave him a sweet smile. “I gave up all chance of a normal life long ago, sir. You gave it up for me, when you put me with the Dursleys instead of letting a wizard family raise me.”

Dumbledore sighed. “I did think that I was doing the best thing, my boy. If you had been raised in our world, you would have been a pampered prince. They might not have meant to spoil you like that, but it would have happened. It is never a good thing for a child when adults stand in awe of them.”

“But that happened _anyway_ ,” Harry answered brutally. “They were either in awe of me, or they suspected me of being the Heir of Slytherin or in league with Voldemort or evil in some other way. After the myth of the Boy-Who-Lived got spread around, there was no other way for them to react.” He paused, panting, and realized that Dumbledore was watching him with sad eyes.

“I would have preferred being spoiled and insufferable to being abused,” Harry finished.

“I did not foresee that,” Dumbledore admitted sadly. “Please believe that I did not _intend_ it, Harry.”

Harry shook his head. “I know. You had only the best of intentions. But you kept on having them even when circumstances should have pointed out to you that having them wasn’t enough. That’s where I distrust you the most, sir. I know that your original went on manipulating me even after he was dead. I don’t know that you’ve ever admitted you were _wrong_. All the things you’ve said to me since I came here don’t imply it.”

Dumbledore was still. Harry watched leaves blowing through the enchanted window on the opposite wall and waited until he spoke again.

“It is very hard to admit that your weaving of a young life has gone wrong,” Dumbledore whispered. “Because of all the ruined chances, all the _delicate_ things that you have ruined. I am sorry, Harry. If I wanted you to have a normal life, I should have labored harder to give you one.”

That was more of a concession than Harry had expected. He turned back and nodded. “Yes, you should have,” he said. “And you should have trusted less in the prophecy and trusted _me_ more, as well as taken more of an active part in the fight against Voldemort. But I have my life now, and I’m learning to be contented with it. If some things need to change, still, I don’t need to be ashamed of _everything_ in it.”

Dumbledore watched him with bright eyes. “I hope that you are right, my boy,” he said. “I do sincerely hope that you are right.”

Harry rolled his eyes at Dumbledore’s stubbornness and inability to actually _listen_ to him, rather than raise doubts, but he could let it go. “Good-bye, sir,” he said. “If and when I visit Ron and Hermione, then I’ll come and visit you, too.”

“I will look forward to that, Harry.”

That was the one thing he had said in the conversation that was likely to be one hundred percent true, Harry thought, as he shut the door of the Headmaster’s office behind him.

*

“You are making a mistake, Draco.”

“Am I?” Draco didn’t look up from packing his cauldron away, but in truth, he was more curious than he would let Severus see. He had wondered when Severus would try to discourage him from continuing to associate with Harry. Now and then over the past few days, Severus had mentioned fleeting hints of Harry’s good qualities, such as his ability to challenge Draco, but Draco had had no doubt that Severus still disapproved of Draco’s choice in partners on the whole.

“Yes.” Severus leaned forwards against his portrait frame, eyes narrowed. “I have learned some more about the requirements of a relationship like the one you are embarking on with Potter. You are temperamentally unsuited to it. Either you would demand too much of him and make him resent your power instead of trust you, or you would be unable to be as firm as he needs and let him get away with too much.”

Draco laughed aloud. “Severus, you do realize that you sound as if you’re talking about a pet, rather than a human being who has the ability to _tell_ me if I do something he doesn’t like?”

“Does Potter have that much wit?” Severus sneered. “I honestly hadn’t noticed.”

Draco shook his head. “And this is yet another way in which you’re less than your original was. He would have given little credit to Potter for intelligence, but he still relied on it, enough that he trusted him to save the world when he was younger and less rational than he is now. You, on the other hand, act as though any relationship we have is foredoomed to disaster just because you hate Potter.”

Silence, and then, “You are like me,” Severus said, intensely. “You are more like me than you think.”

“There was a time when I would have taken that as the greatest of compliments,” Draco said lightly, and laid a stirring stick in the proper slim slot in his packing case. He could have packed by means of a spell, but he was determined to indulge in this last conversation with Severus. “Now I know that you mean I’m doomed to lose the first person I’m truly interested in because that is what happened to you, and I refuse the comparison.”

Severus caught his breath in what sounded like pain. Draco watched in curiosity. How much did portraits feel? He had never settled that question to his satisfaction. He especially didn’t know if this portrait could feel deep emotions, since he had acknowledged that it was a highly imperfect copy of the Severus he had known.

“I am not my original,” Severus said, after several moments of tense, painful silence—or at least they seemed painful to him. Draco felt much less than he would have expected. “I have seen things that he did not, including your strange fascination with Mr. Potter.”

“And you knew some things that he knew,” Draco said. “Did you remember him changing the last riddle so that it referred to the Astronomy Tower and the memory trap that I went through there?”

Severus’s eyes flickered in the way Draco had once known would be followed by calm, cold chastisement. Then he said, “Yes, I did.”

Draco nodded. “That was the hardest of the traps to go through for me, the one I might not have survived if Harry wasn’t there. He repaid me for being there with him in the Forbidden Forest when the centaur’s arrow struck him. I won’t give him up now. If you’d like to blame someone for my stubborn clinging to him, you might blame yourself.”

The portrait Severus turned and strode away, beyond the edge of the frame. Draco waited for a few minutes, but he didn’t reappear. Draco shrugged and returned to packing.

He felt satisfied, despite the exasperation that the past week and more had given him, despite the uncertainty in the future of his relationship with Potter lasting, and despite the fact that he had to control Covington from a distance. He didn’t mind the power that Covington granted him. And he could allow her a little freedom in certain actions, as long as he always kept the prohibition in place that she couldn’t speak or write or gesture to anyone about his control over her.

_I’ll have to strengthen the prohibition against allowing anyone to read her mind,_ he reminded himself.

Coming back to Hogwarts had been less stressful than he once would have said it was. He had even managed to work with the Weasel and the Mudblood successfully. And Severus was not the man he had remembered in portrait form, overwhelming and stressful—disturbingly like an idol to him, as Draco saw now. He didn’t know everything. The man who had was dead, or, more likely, the product of a fevered adolescent’s mind and a few nights on the run.

And Harry…

Draco smiled a little as he shut the lid of his trunk. Yes, his relationship with Harry was uncertain, but he no longer wanted to live in a world studded only with diamond-edged truths and nothing else. Fucking someone was like brewing an experimental potion. If he could live with uncertainty and risks in the one, he could surely live with it in the other.

“Draco?”

Harry stood in the doorway of Severus’s rooms, waiting for him with folded arms and a raised eyebrow. Draco walked over and kissed him. He made the kiss forceful on purpose, and Harry grunted and then leaned into him, nearly bowling him over.

Satisfied that Harry had once again been reminded that Draco wouldn’t leave, Draco stepped away. “You’re ready?” he asked.

Harry nodded. “I’ve packed everything up. Who knows when my owl will follow me home, but I’m not worried about her.”

His eyes were fixed on Draco, clearly saying what he _was_ worried about. Draco took his hand and turned it over, spreading the fingers. Harry watched him, brow furrowed in a way that said he wondered what Draco was doing.

“I trust your hand to drag me out of danger, the way you did with the memory trap,” Draco said. 

Harry flushed. “That was nothing,” he muttered. “You would have overcome it on your own if I hadn’t been there.”

Draco shook his head and kissed Harry’s palm. “And I also trust your hand to be bound and strapped to my headboard,” he said. “Do you understand?”

Harry licked his lips and nodded. “It’s something I never thought I would have,” he said.

“But you have it now,” Draco said in that tone of cool command Harry liked. “Stop doubting me.”

Harry gave him a cocky grin and leaned in to kiss him back, using more than a hint of teeth. Draco shivered with delight. While he wanted Harry to understand _all_ the terms of their relationship, it would have been no fun without the challenge.

“Come on, then,” Harry muttered. “I’m more than ready to go.”

And they left the castle, climbing up the stairs from the dungeons slowly. Draco could still feel his past self climbing along with him if he thought about it, a terrified teenager who sometimes looked at Harry Potter and envied him, and sometimes, more terribly, wanted him for himself.

_Now I have him,_ Draco thought, listening to the man breathing beside him.

On the whole—and he thought the same could be said of Harry—he preferred his future to his past.

The End.


End file.
